Commemorating the Life of Irwin Hollander, Master Printer

To start off 2019, I decided to recognize the achievements of Irwin Hollander, who died on Nov. 16, 2018, in Brooklyn. He was 90. Like the rest of us inked up brethren Hollander was a printmaker, but he decided early on in his career to become a Master Printer. For those uninitiated, a Master Printer is a person who is trained in all manner of printmaking technical skills. He/she then goes on to run a printmaking workshop, or contract independently with other print shops to print images for other artists who are not printmakers. That type of business has been around for a few hundred years, and has permitted artists in other media the opportunity to make original printed editions. Hollander worked with some of the best artists of the 20th century, and he devotedly taught printmaking in his later years. The man’s contributions to the medium are noteworthy so I wanted to share a little of the life and the prints he printed for other artists….

Hollander started out as an artist who developed a reputation as a commercial master printer. He was an important part of the revival of fine art printing in the 1960s that became popular in the United States. He often said that his main goal was “to serve artists.”

Irwin Hollander was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1927 to Henry and Ida (Burak) Hollander. His father was a taxi driver, and his mother worked in the garment industry. The family eventually moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Hollander dropped out of school at 14 but he later attended the School of Industrial Art, (now the High School of Art and Design), and studied fashion illustration, life drawing and photography at Washington Irving High School. By 1945 he was taking photographs for advertisements at R. H. Macy’s.

Hollander’s artistic training assisted him in the Army in 1946, while he served in Guam with a photography technical unit. After leaving the Army, he attended the Brooklyn Museum Art School, the Esmeralda National School of Painting, Sculpture and Printmaking in Mexico City, and the Art Students League in New York City.

In 1955, he married Nina Serser, a social worker. They moved to California, settling in San Diego where Hollander worked for a commercial printing company and fell in with the city’s art scene. The company agreed to let him use their equipment at night to work with artists.

That year, Hollander became acquainted with June Wayne, whose newly opened Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles would play a major role in introducing American artists to printmaking, and in training master printers. Within a year he was the first master printer trained at Tamarind.

In 1964, he returned to New York and opened a print workshop in a studio that had been vacated by Philip Pavia. Hollander later rented the first floor of the building as a display area and gallery. The first print his workshop published was by Leonard Baskin. Later on he developed a partnership with Fred Genis, a Dutch master printer.

He was best known for working with Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell, convincing them that their gestural style would adapt well to printmaking. Hollander’s workshop also published portfolios and prints by Pierre Alechinsky, John Cage, Jim Dine, Sam Francis, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Lindner James MacGarrell, Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg and Saul Steinberg.

After he closed Hollander’s Workshop in 1972, he taught printmaking at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He later moved to Wells Bridge, NY, and spent the rest of his career on his own art. Rest In Peace…..

Botswana's Playful Thamae Shesogo

Thama Setshogo a.k.a. Thamae b. 1970-2004, from the Ghanzi district, in Botswana. He is considered one of the most famous artists ever to come from Botswana. Thamae grew up on a farm near the Kalahari game reserve, where his parents worked as farm laborers. It was here that he developed an interest in nature and a love of animals.

Becoming an artist was nothing new to Thamae. It was always within him. He always loved to make beautiful things with his hands and loved to learn new ways of making things. Mostly, he worked directly from memory without any preliminary sketches. He loved to experiment with different art media. For him his art was the link between the past, the present and the future.

Although he never attained formal training, Thamae started to paint in the early 1990s at the Kuru Art Project. He became famous for his large black and white relief prints, and he explored lithography, making several prints at the Artists Press in Johannesburg, South Africa. In 1999, he was one of four Kuru artists to take part in a print workshop at the Tamarind Institute of Lithography in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He also attended several of the Thapong International Artists' workshops in Botswana and an international workshop in Australia. Today, his prints are much sought after.

His subject matter choices were simplified yet detail-oriented, and had a certain symmetry. He often chose his subjects from his childhood memories living on the farm.Subtle, elegant color combinations are a major feature of his work. His work reminds me in part of the imagery of Aborigine artists from Australia. The flattened out spaces, texture and decorative borders have structure to support and surround the subject. His playful subject’s faces are a delight and his joy in rendering them is apparent.

Tragically, Thamae died suddenly in 2004, leaving behind a wife and seven young children. The body of his work continues to be sold to help support his family. Any inquiries for his work can be directed to

For purchasing information please contact:
San Arts & Crafts
Telephone and Fax: (+267) 659 7242
Email: san.artsandcrafts@info.bw

For questions about the project, artists or art contact:
Kuru Art Project
P.O. Box 219
Ghanzi
Botswana
Telephone: (+267) 659 6102
Fax: (+267) 659 7703
Email: art@kuruart.com

Awards:
1991 Most Promising Young Artist
1992 Award of Merit for drawing and painting, Artists of Botswana exhibitions
1993 Trophy of Honor, Graphica Creativa Exhibition, Jyvaskyla, Finland
1994 World Award Winners Gallery, Katowice, Poland and Ronneby, Sweden
1994 Intergrafia '94, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia
1996 Graphica Creativa '96, Jyvaskyla, Finland
1997 commission relief wall panel, Princess Marina Hospital, Gaborone, Botswana
1997 mural, Return of the Moon exhibition, National Museum, Windhoek, Namibia
2003 SMTG International Print Triennial, Krakow, Poland

Pablo O'Higgins' Unique Trail in US/Mexican Printmaking

Pablo Esteban O'Higgins (born Paul Higgins Stevenson ,1904 - 1983) was an American-Mexican artist, illustrator and a blond-haired, blue-eyed Presbyterian  who became a celebrated Mexican muralist. He  was born in Salt lake City, UT and was raised between there and San Diego, CA. His father was a lawyer of blue-blood 'English of Mayflower' descent, and his mother  was a refined upper-middle class housewife. He had one grandfather who was Scots-Irish, who died before Pablo (then Paul Higgins) was born.  In 1922, he went to study at the Academy of Arts in San Diego, but soon afterward he became a student of and assistant to the famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Rivera said if he ever had a son, he’d wanted him to be like O’Higgins. 

O'Higgins was so taken with Mexican culture from an early age when he lived on his father's rach in California. It was there that he met and became acquainted with the Mexican workers. As for their politics, that came in 1924 when after moving to Mexico permanently, he joined his mentor Rivera and became a member of the Mexican Communist Party (which he remained a member until 1947.)

From 1928-1930 Pablo O'Higgins worked on Cultural Missions in Durango, Hidalgo, Veracruz, and Zacatecas.  In 1930, he co-published, with Jean Charlot and Frances Toor, Las obras de José Guadalupe Posada, a Mexican engraver. In 1931 O'Higgins founded, together with Leopoldo Méndez and Juan de la Cabada, the Proletarian Intellectual League.  He also contributed illustrations to the newspaper of the USA Communist Party, called the Daily Worker.  

1933 was a busy year for O'Higgins. He was teaching drawing in primary schools. His illustrations won him a Soviet scholarship to go to Moscow to study at their Academy of Art. He also contributed artwork to Mexican Folkways magazine, and he co-founded the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists, LEAR). 

One of O'Higgins' major contributions to printmaking came In 1937, when he joined with fellow artists Leopoldo Méndez and Luis Arenal  and became co-founder of the world-famous political graphic arts workshop, Taller de Gráfica Popular ("People's Graphic Workshop"). The Taller became an inspiration to many politically-motivated artists and  a place for artists to speak their minds, so much so that it became a major forum for political artwork in Mexico.  Recently the Taller was commemorated with a publication and a tour of some of the artists' works  by some of the artists associated with the Taller... O’Higgins educational and printmaking contributions continued when he worked with San Francisco artists Byron Randall, Victor Arnautoff, and Adelyne Cross Erikson establish a graphic arts workshop in 1947. With seemingly endless energy, in 1947, he worked with Los Angeles printmakers Jules Heller and Arnold Mesches to establish the Los Angeles Graphic Arts Workshop, which was the predesessor of the now famous Tamarind Institute in New Mexico. O'Higgins also taught at the California Labor School in San Francisco in 1945 & 1949, and in 1948 he and Xavier Guerrero founded the Sociedad para el Impulso de las Artes Plásticas, and the Salón de Plástica Mexicana in 1949. 

Joining the National Assembly of Artists in 1952, O'Higgins exhibited his paintings at the Salón de Plástica Mexicana. In the late 1960s he traveled and taught mural painting courses in Russia and Eastern Europe. 

A side note *O'Higgins once followed Tina Modotti, the radical photographer, to Russia. In the 1950s, he was placed on the U.S. attorney general’s blacklist, and on a Mexican Govt. deportation list . Being from a well-to-do Anglo-American family, he kept quiet about his father’s 1915 involvement as an assistant attorney general in the  execution  of Utah miner and labor martyr Joe Hill. In 1959 Pablo O'Higgins married María de Jesús de la Fuente Casas, a lawyer from Monterrey , Nuevo León. 

O’Higgins is admired not only for his art but also for his love of Mexico and his determination to bridge the two countries and their cultures through art. O'Higgins painted the people he respected… the ordinary, hard-working Mexican campesinos and workers whom he respected as the “Real Mexicans”. His subject was their struggle for dignity. O'Higgins will be remembered for his desire to bridge the two cultures he loved, and for promoting the arts with  so many worthwhile organizations.

Particular noteworthy is that O'Higgins'portrait is included in a mural in Chicano Park, in San Diego County, the largest collection of Chicano murals in the U.S. He appears next to Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso,  Che Guevara, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. 

Awards and Exhibitions:

San Francisco at the Art Center Gallery, 1925 and 1927 

John Levy Gallery,1931,

Gallery of Mexican Arts

Association of American Artists, 1943

Burial with honors at the El Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City

First prize, Salón Anual de Pintura, Grabado y Escultura of the INBA , 1959

Elías Sourausky Award in Arts, 1971 

He also exhibited in Cuba, Spain, Los Angeles and Mexico. 

He was the only non-native Mexican artist whose work was included in the first major exhibit of Mexican art held in the United States at the MOMA's,"Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art" ,New York, 1940.

Murals:
Ship Scalers Union, Seattle, WA, 1945
International Longshoremen’s & Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) in Honolulu, HI, 1952. 
and a dozen others in Mexico