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Indepth Arts News:
"Post-Impressionist Prints: Paris in the 1890s"
1999-07-01 until 1999-09-13
Los Angeles County Museum
Los Angeles, CA,
USA United States of America
At the end of the nineteenth century, painters in Paris took to
making original prints in greater numbers than ever before. Young and old, many of the most
inventive artists of the day worked closely with adventurous publishers and skillful professional
printers to create an astonishing number of unforgettable images of Paris in the 1890s. At a
time when etching still enjoyed its prestige as the most suitable medium for original
printmaking, other, more commercial methods began to find favor. Woodcut and lithography,
both standard techniques for mass-produced illustration, now began to be used by daring
young painters, resulting in entrancing color prints that were published in strictly limited
editions.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art—LACMA—is pleased to present Post-Impressionist
Prints: Paris in the 1890s. On loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this exhibition
features 122 prints by 33 artists, including 22 lithographs by Toulouse-Lautrec. Representing
an important period of development in the history of printmaking, the exhibition will be on view
at LACMA from July 1 to September 13, 1999.
In the exhibition, the Impressionists are represented by Degas, Pissaro, and Cassat; the
Symbolists by Redon, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Carriere; and the Nabis by Bonnard, Vuillard,
Denis, and Vallotton. For decades the number of contemporary collectors with a taste for
such avant-garde prints remained small, so that many of these editions did not sell out until
well into the twentieth century. During the 1940s Carl Zigrosser, as the new curator of prints
and drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, was still able to acquire the majority of the
prints on view in this exhibition for relatively moderate sums. Happily, Zigrosser’s astute
purchases included pristine sets of the three most celebrated color print albums of the 1890s
by Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, which together form the
heart of this exhibition.
LACMA’s permanent collection includes more than 110,000 works spanning the history of art
from ancient times to the present, making it the premier encyclopedic visual arts museum in
the western United States. The museum uses its collection and resources to provide a variety
of educational, aesthetic, intellectual and cultural experiences for its visitors. In addition,
LACMA offers an ever-changing series of outstanding special exhibitions of the work from the
world’s leading artists, as well as lectures, classes, family activities, film programs and
musical events. Through its Institute for Art and Cultures, it serves as a leader and convener
of Southern California cultural and educational institutions for the exchange of ideas and
cultivation of new perspectives on the interaction of art and society.
Credit Line: This exhibition was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art from its
permanent collection.
Curator: Victor Carlson, senior curator of prints and drawings at LACMA.
Catalogue: The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue written by John Ittmann, the
Philadelphia Museum of Art’s curator of prints and organizer of the exhibition.
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