An American Focus

"An American Focus" celebrates the exceptional and extensive Anderson Graphic Arts Collection of prints, multiples, and monotypes by major contemporary American artists. The collection spans more than thirty years of print production from 1962 to 1998, surveying the American printmaking renaissance with outstanding examples of print processes - woodcut, intaglio, lithography, screenprint, and monotype - from major fine-art presses. 'The best' was long held as a criterion by Mr. and Mrs. Harry Anderson in acquiring works of art, and this selection of 192 works from their collection - now housed with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco - admirably reflects their collecting strategy. This volume and the exhibition it accompanies offer the public a rare opportunity to view works on paper by many of the best-known contemporary artists, including Richard Diebenkorn, Kiki Smith, Jasper Johns, Elizabeth Murray, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Josef Albers, Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, and many others representing both the East and West Coasts.
The works are presented in chronological order and organized into four sections, each corresponding to the decade in which the works were produced, from the 1960s to the 1990s. Karin Breuer introduces each of the sections and describes important events and trends in American print history; she has also contributed an essay on the story behind the renowned Anderson Collection as well as an illustrated chronology of American printmaking from 1945 to the present. With the addition of a fully illustrated checklist of the 192 works, this volume is essential reading for everyone interested in contemporary American art and printmaking.