Gemini GEL

As Gemini G.E.L. approaches its momentous fiftieth anniversary, when a celebratory exhibition honoring the workshop's many years of achievements will take place at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the future is bright with forthcoming projects and new innovations. Today, it is hard to remember that when Gemini was founded in 1966, f... ine art printmaking was on the verge of both a technical renaissance and a soaring popularity, as the torch of new art passed from France to America. The initial focus of the print revival was devoted to lithography, primarily as a result of the training master printers received at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, founded in Los Angeles in 1960. One of those newly trained master printers, Kenneth Tyler, had a small shop in the city when, almost a half century ago, a pair of University of Southern California friends and fraternity brothers, Sidney B. Felsen and Stanley Grinstein (1927-2014) discovered Tyler's shop and saw that it had the potential to become a unique fine art workshop and publishing house. Felsen and Grinstein saw a future that would allow them to work not only with renowned artists but also, after Tyler's departure in 1974, to explore, beyond lithography and silkscreen, the entire breadth of the graphic arts, as well as continue to seek technical milestones in three-dimensional multiples and limited edition sculpture. They understood that, to rise to the top tier of workshops worldwide, the facilities could be open only to invited artists and that the artists would work directly with the process alongside the printers. Each art work would be conceived exclusively for the publishing and editions would be strictly limited, with each image signed and numbered by the artist and identified by the Gemini chop, signifying the authenticity of each original print or multiple produced. In other words, the shop would publish multiple originals, never works that replicate or reproduce art in other media. When the sixties/seventies art world began expanding at ...Read More