Robert Blackburn (artist)

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Robert Blackburn
New York City, New York, U.S.
EducationArt Students League of New York
EmployerNational Academy of Design
Known forRobert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop
AwardsMacArthur Fellowship 1992
Blackburn and students in the workshop.

Robert Hamilton Blackburn (December 12, 1920 – April 21, 2003) was an

African-American artist, teacher, and master printmaker
.

Early life and education

Blackburn was born in

Harlem Arts Community Center operated by the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project, studying with Charles Alston and Augusta Savage, among others. At the Harlem Art Community Center Blackburn met Ronald Joseph, who was his classmate.[3] Blackburn credited his work at the WPA for the interest he had in working collaboratively throughout the rest of his career.[4]

Blackburn studied lithography and other printmaking techniques with Riva Helfond, who taught him how to operate the press, process, and prepare stones, based on simple techniques.[5] He frequented the Uptown Community Workshop, a gathering place for black artists and writers such as Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and Jacob Lawrence. Blackburn worked at the Workshop as a monitor, running errands for teachers. This role allowed him to meet artists such as Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, and Jacob Lawrence.[6]

Blackburn attended P.S. 139 and then Frederick Douglass Junior High School (1932–36), where his English teacher was Countee Cullen. Starting in 1936, he went to DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he worked on the literary magazine The Magpie as a writer and artist along with peer James Baldwin.[7] He graduated in 1940.

From early prints that portrayed cityscapes and figures on abstract backgrounds, Blackburn moved into more abstract work. From 1940 to 1943, a work scholarship to the

Art Students League, Blackburn won a School Arts League Award and an Art Students League Working Scholarship for study.[6] Between 1943 and 1948 he supported himself with difficulty with arts-related freelance work, producing maps, charts and other graphics. Blackburn was also later able to study at Stanley William Hayter's influential Atelier 17 in New York, an experience that contributed to his desire to open his own print shop.[6]

Career

In 1947, Robert Blackburn established the Printmaking Workshop, an 8,000-square-foot (740 m2) loft at 114 West 17th Street in New York City.[8] When it first opened, the workshop's program included evening classes, an open studio working area, and print shops where artists could carry out their own experimentation.[6] In the early 1950s, Blackburn and Barnet produced a suite of Barnet's lithographs that were a technical tour de force, requiring up to seventeen colors and multiple stones in the printing process.[9] During 1953 and 1954, Blackburn traveled throughout Europe.[10]

Blackburn was famously generous to other artists who came through the Workshop and fostered an atmosphere of openness to diversity. Among the many artists who have worked with Blackburn at the Printmaking Workshop are

Melvin Edwards, Mildred Thompson, Benny Andrews, Betty Blayton, Aminah Robinson, Romare Bearden, Kay Brown, Dinga McCannon, Leonora Carrington, Roy DeCarava, Sue Fuller, Eldzier Cortor, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Faith Wilding and Jack Whitten. He was especially close with Romare Bearden, and is credited with introducing him to the collagraph process. The two met at meetings of the artist group 306.[11] His commitment to sponsoring minority and third-world students and developing community programs profoundly influenced younger printmakers, who seeded similar workshops around the United States and internationally.[12]

In 1956, when the Printmaking Workshop struggled financially and faced the threat of closing, fellow artist and printmaker Chaim Koppelman devised a means to save the studio by transforming it into a cooperative with annual dues.[6] Blackburn credited Koppelman with saving the Workshop, and in 1992, Blackburn, Barnet, and Koppelman received a New York Artists Equity Award for their "dedicated service to the printmaking community."[13]

Blackburn's most productive period as an artist and printmaker was between the late 1950s and the early 1970s.[9] During this period he produced a large body of abstract still lifes and color compositions, mostly in lithography. In the 1970s, Blackburn turned away from lithography and began producing woodcuts, as well as some monotypes and intaglios.

Blackburn also served between 1957 and 1963 as the first master printer for

Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), where he produced editions for such artists as Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Larry Rivers.[9] He returned to primarily working at the Printmaking Workshop on a full-time basis after a printing accident in 1962, in which a stone by Robert Rauschenberg was broken, shaking Blackburn's confidence.[14]

In 1971, Blackburn put in place a board of trustees to help run the Printmaking Workshop and incorporated it as a

El Museo Del Barrio
, New York.

During the 1970s, he participated in a community art space called Communications Village operated by printmaker Benjamin Leroy Wigfall in Kingston, NY. Andrews made prints with the help of printer assistants who had been taught printmaking by Wigfall, and he exhibited there.[15]

Over the years, Blackburn taught at the National Academy of Design (1949), the New School for Social Research (1950-1968), Cooper Union, New York University (1965-1971), School of Visual Arts (1967-1971), Pratt Institute (1974-1975), Columbia University (beginning in 1970), and Rutgers University (1977-1979). He founded the Experimental Printmaking Institute (EPI) at Lafayette College in 1996, to work innovatively and experimentally with students.[16] In 1981, Blackburn was elected to the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and he became a full member in 1994. In 1987, he received the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Award for having "contributed significantly to the cultural life of New York City."[6] In 1988, Blackburn and the nonprofit Printmaking Workshop received a Governor's Art Award from the New York State Council on the Arts. He also received a MacArthur fellowship in 1992. Blackburn was a long time member of the Society of American Graphic Artists. He lived in the Chelsea Hotel later in life, and died in New York City.[17]

On September 18, 2003, the Great Hall of

Metropolitan Museum
in 2009.

References

  1. ^ Leimbach, Dulcie. "ART; A Master and His Mecca on West 24th St.", The New York Times, February 8, 1998. Accessed February 20, 2011.
  2. OCLC 892515381.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  3. ^ Life Impressions: 20th-Century African American Prints from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (an exhibition catalogue). Hamilton, NY: Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University. 2001. p. 46.
  4. OCLC 892515381.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  5. ^ Parris, Nina (1985). Through a Master Printer: Robert Blackburn and the Printmaking Workshop. Columbia, SC: Columbia Museum.
  6. ^
    OCLC 25026051
    .
  7. ^ Berstein, Alice. "Harlem Artist Robert Blackburn Remembered", The New York Beacon, October 22, 2003.
  8. ^ Glueck, Grace. "Printmaking for the Love of It." New York Times, July 12, 1988.
  9. ^ a b c Cullen, Deborah. "A Life in Print: Robert Blackburn and American Printmaking" Archived 2015-03-29 at the Wayback Machine. Anyone Can Fly Foundation website.
  10. OCLC 892515381.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  11. OCLC 892515381.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  12. ^ York, Hildreth. "Bob Blackburn and the Printmaking Workshop." Black American Literature Forum, vol. 20, Indiana State University, 1986.
  13. ^ "Chaim Koppelman: Pioneering Printmaker and Teacher." Journal of the Print World, Winter 2010, p. 4.
  14. OCLC 21798887
    .
  15. ^ Fendrich, Laurie (2022-10-20). "When an artist becomes a community: The life and work of Benjamin Wigfall". Two Coats of Paint. Retrieved 2023-05-17.
  16. OCLC 892515381.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  17. ^ Cotter, Holland. "Robert Blackburn, Founder of the Printmaking Workshop, Dies at 82." "New York Times, April 25, 2003.

External links

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