黑料不打烊

Inventor of a unique printmaking technique termed `print-painting,` Sam Glankoff was an intensely private individual who chose not to publicly exhibit his work for decades. At the age of 87, he had his first one-person show held at the Graham Gallery in New York in October 1981. Glankoff died in April 1982, six months after his Graham exhibition. Yet he lived to experience his work being exhibited next to Robert Motherwell`s and Helen Frankenthaler`s at a show curated by Gene Baro for the Brooklyn Museum, to read a review of his work by John Russell, and to participate in a documentary film on his life and art. By the end of his life, his work transformed from archaic elemental shapes and Zen-infused circles to emotive primordial figures. He had reemerged into the world and witnessed its celebration of him. His unique process, called `print-painting,` (the term being invented by Elke Solomon, former curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art), was developed through years of experimentation with paper size and densities, various methods of applying and drying the pigment, and was finally perfected with the application of casein, which served to harden the ink and extend his color palette. In this process Glankoff was able to control the absorbency of the paper, so the panels received layer after layer of color. "Like monotypes, they are unique transfer prints but, as in painting, there is an excessive importance associated with the application of the pigment," states David Kiehl, former Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. "`Print-Painting` is really an invention of Glankoff`s," writes Jeffrey Wechsler, curator of Sam Glankoff`s retrospective exhibition held in 1984. "It`s rather remarkable that in the late 20th century an artist could really come up with an entirely new technique. Certainly it was based on other techniques. But it had specific qualities and characteristics which Glankoff, through his great experience with the medium, realized had to come together in an entirely new form."