Title: Death and the Artist (Tod und Künstler), from the series Dance of Death (Totentanz) Artist: Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) Nationality: German Date: 1921, published 1922 Medium: Etching, soft-ground etching and drypoint Credit: Gift of James and Pamela Elesh, 1999.21.13 Lovis Corinth was one of the best-known artists working in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany. Born in Tapiau and educated in […]
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Komar & Melamid (Vitaly Komar; Aleksander Melamid, (Russian, born 1943; Russian, born 1945) Peace I: Life of Tolstoy, 1986 Color lithograph and photolithograph Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of Curated Prints, Ltd. 2011.15.2 As artists in the Soviet Union, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid gained recognition for their ironic adaptation […]
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Title: Untitled (Venice Biennale) Artist: Fred Wilson (born 1954) Nationality: American Date: 2003 Medium or Technique: C-print Credit line: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of Peter Norton; 2016.4.62 Image Credit: © Fred Wilson, courtesy Pace Gallery Fred Wilson is a curator and conceptual artist that often works with “found objects” […]
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Title: Small Worlds III from the portfolio Kleine Welten (Small Worlds) Artist: Wassily Kandinsky (French, born Russia, 1866 – 1944) Year: 1922 Medium: Color lithograph on paper Credit: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, 1985.136 Bringing together the wide-ranging fields of religion, music, color theory, and philosophy, the early-20th century painter and printmaker Wassily Kandinsky masterfully created some […]
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William Gropper (1897-1977) Painter, cartoonist and lithographer Blacklisted: William Gropper’s Capriccios, the exhibition on display this spring in the Ellen Philips Katz and Howard C. Katz Gallery, came together through original research by Block Museum Graduate Fellow John Murphy. A PhD candidate in art history, Murphy spoke to us about curating the exhibition, which is […]
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Picture a sundial and you’ll probably think of an object made from brass or another type of metal. But in early modern Europe you could find versions of a sundial and other scientific instruments constructed from paper. Suzanne Karr-Schmidt, the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Prints and […]
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One of the highlights of Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe at the Block Museum is a series of dazzlingly elaborate etchings of complex geometrical shapes, found in the Alsdorf Gallery portion of the exhibition, by the German artist Jost Amman. The prints are plates from an influential book by Wenzel Jamnitzer, a promiment Nuremberg goldsmith, published in 1568. Northwestern University […]
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Watch our video recap of the first Printpalooza Print Fair, held January 29, 2011 at the Block Museum. Participants included Drive By Press, Cannonball Press, Eric Fuertes, Spudnik Press, Comix Revolution, and abstract science. Video produced by Ben Millstein/massive.tv
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