Second Impressions

In 2008, the Gallery was very fortunate to receive an extensive collection of re-strike etchings (prints carefully produced from original, historic etching plates), woodcuts, linocuts, lithographs and offset lithographic images, etchings and engravings, and letterpress pages. Donated by a collector who prefers to remain anonymous, this is the first major acquisition for the Gallery’s Print Study Collection – a subset of the Permanent Collection – since its formation in 1926 with a gift from the Carnegie Corporation. This new collection of 375 prints is comprised of images by Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt van Rijn and William Blake as well as single pieces by Andrea Mantegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Diego Velasquez, Francisco Goya, Paul Potter, Jacob van Ruisdael, Peter-Paul Reubens, and Anthony van Dyck, among others. Notable early 20th Century European artists include Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Raoul Dufy, Joan Miro, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti and Salvador Dali. Present as well are major works by North American artists such as Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and Jean-Paul Riopelle. In keeping with our role within the University as an Academic Support Unit, and our desire to share this resource with the public, the Gallery will be inviting historians and printmakers from the Halifax community to explore the collection and develop research projects on aspects of particular interest, and to curate small, focused exhibitions to highlight the results of their study. Halifax artist Dan O’Neill, who also teaches lithography, monotype and drawing in the Fine and Media Arts Department at NSCAD University, is initiating this series of exhibitions. O’Neill has focused on the lithographs by Robert Motherwell and Willem de Kooning that are each paired with poetic works by Octavio Paz and Frank O’Hara respectively. Regarding his selection, O’Neill states, “With lithographs that record Motherwell’s improvisations and de Kooning’s figurations, enriched by letterpress vocal fields from Octavio Paz and Frank O’Hara, these liberated pages chronicle riffs on the human song – songs that are arranged for this project to make evident the free-ranging nature of word, sound and image.”