Progressive Printmakers: Wisconsin Artists And The Print Renaissance

“An important verbal and visual document of a great period of American printmaking.”—Gordon W. Gilkey, Pacific Northwest College of Art and Curator of Prints and Drawings, Portland Art Museum

“A superb chronicle of a unique period in the development of printmaking in the U.S. in the post–World War II years. This is an excellent history of a gifted group of artist-professors who, through their creative and innovative approach to the teaching of printmaking, helped to initiate a renaissance in printmaking that has become a singular addition to twentieth-century American artistic expression.”—Clare Romano, Pratt Institute, and John Ross, Manhattanville College

Printmaking exploded on the American art scene after World War II, rapidly expanding from New York to the Midwest and beyond. Central to this movement and its development was the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where a group of talented young artists was making prints and developing a print curriculum. Progressive Printmakers documents, in words and stunning pictures, the breakthrough aesthetics and technical innovations that made the Madison printmakers a force in the art world.
In lively memoirs and analyses, the artists tell the story of the evolving print program at Madison. The distinguished print historian, the late James Watrous, provides an introductory overview, placing the program’s development in the national context of the American print renaissance. A concluding chapter traces the founding of Tandem Press, an exciting extension of the Wisconsin print curriculum. As Watrous notes, the University’s commitment has been “renewed again and again during a half-century when printmaking flourished in America as never before.”

Artists featured
• Alfred Sessler
• Dean Meeker
• Warrington Colescott
• Raymond Gloeckler
• Jack Damer
• Walter Hamady
• William Weege
• Frances Myers
• David Becker