For 25 Years: Gemini G.E.L. commemorates the twenty-fifth anniversary of Gemini G.E.L. (Graphics Editions Limited) in an exhibition of twenty-eight works, all drawn from the Museum’s collection.
Gemini’s printers and artisans have collaborated with fifty-three artists, many of them among the most influential of the late twentieth century, often producing landmark works. Included in the exhibition are Robert Rauschenberg’s Booster of 1967, the largest lithograph published as of that date, and Claes Oldenburg’s Profile Airflow (1968), Gemini’s first multiple edition. Also exhibited are works by Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Dorothea Rockburne, and Richard Serra.
Since its founding in Los Angeles in 1966 by Sidney B. Felsen, Stanley Grinstein, and Kenneth Tyler (who left in 1973 to found Tyler Graphics in Bedford, New York), Gemini G.E.L. has encouraged the collaboration of artists with printers and other artisans. Together they have investigated and developed new materials and technology. The shop’s activity was confined at first to printmaking, but in response to Oldenburg’s interest in making Profile Airflow soon began to produce three-dimensional editions as well.
After Josef Albers, the first artist invited to Gemini, completed a large series of prints at the workshop in 1966, Robert Rauschenberg began to make lithographs there. Other artists of his generation were persuaded to work at Gemini. California artists such as Sam Francis, Ken Price, and Ed Ruscha were also among the early participants in the workshop. Ellsworth Kelly, Lichtenstein, and Rauschenberg have all returned to Gemini to create series of prints over the course of two decades. Together with Jonathan Borofsky, Susan Rothenberg, and others, they have assured Gemini’s continuing vitality and importance.
Also on view at the Museum is Richard Serra: Afangar Icelandic Series, a group of prints made to celebrate Gemini’s twenty-fifth anniversary.
Organized by Riva Castleman, director of the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books.
