Welcome Back

Please note that this exhibition has been extended through October 27.

Welcome Back to another season of exhibitions at Pace Prints’ 32 East 57th Street gallery.

Our opening exhibition, Welcome Back, is both sentimental and refreshing in bringing together prints and multiples by nine artists with whom we started our publishing activities 50 years ago.

It was Pace Gallery’s commitment to their artists to enable them to pursue their creativity in every medium that was the motivation in establishing Pace Prints as an affiliate of Pace Gallery.

Lucas Samaras’, Book, 1968 was the first project that Pace Prints published. It was an extraordinarily creative and complex undertaking that involved die-cutting elements that formed the pages of the Book, colorfully illustrated throughout together with Samaras’ literary contributions and several three dimensional collaged elements. Starting off with such an ambitious project has made everything we published subsequently “a walk in the park.”

Ernest Trova’s prints and multiples were the early focus of our publishing activities which continued for many years. Ernie was well ahead of his time with his poignant Falling Man images rendered as screen prints and in various three dimensional forms. Trova’s iconography is both whimsical and serious, almost a precursor of Jeff Koons, especially in his large chrome sculptures.

Sven Lukin’s soft color palette and hard edge almost phallic images lent themselves to the screen printing process and was one of our most successful early projects. Included in the exhibition are images in his portfolio created in 1969.

One of the most colorful and beautiful projects from the early days of Pace Prints is Changes, a portfolio of screen prints by Jack Youngerman. With vibrant color and very organic flowing shapes, these images exhibit the influence of his immediate post-World War II experiences as an artist in Paris.

Nicholas Krushenick’s imagery is graphically very dynamic, one might say often somewhat aggressive but always colorful as is his personality. We enjoyed collaborating with him and the printer Domberger in publishing the prints in this exhibition.

Slightly later, we were privileged to have published prints that are included in this exhibition by Gene Davis, Robert Goodnough, Charles Hinman and Kenzo Okada. These prints represent a variety of iconography, and illustrate the adaptability of the screen printing process to wide variations in artists’ imagery.

Pace Prints is grateful to these nine artists whose editions we were fortunate to have published in our early years.

Welcome Back is not only a reunion, but it is also the beginning of our celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Pace Prints.

Richard Solomon
Founder & President, Pace Prints