Text provided by the gallery: David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) at the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location in New York.
Curated by Jeffrey Weiss and organized in collaboration with the Ad Reinhardt Foundation, the exhibition will explore Reinhardt’s screenprints—a group of works that the artist created toward the end of his life—and his interest in translating the subtleties of his painted work into the print medium.
By the time Reinhardt made his first screenprint in 1964—for X + X (Ten Works by Ten Painters), a portfolio of prints produced by the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut—he had already spent more than two decades developing the matte surfaces and subtle chromatic compositions characteristic of his late paintings, including monochromes in red and blue as well as the so-called black paintings, in which black is mixed with red, blue, and green.
The success of that first screenprint, based on the palette and square-format design of a classic black painting, encouraged Reinhardt to produce the monographic print portfolio 10 Screenprints, published in 1966 by the Wadsworth Atheneum as well—a project that allowed the artist to continue to challenge and explore the possibilities and limits of the screenprint medium.
Featuring these prints along with preparatory studies and maquettes, this exhibition will reveal an underexamined facet of Reinhardt’s practice. In addition to being the first solo exhibition to focus on the artist’s screenprints, Print—Painting—Maquette will also include a number of small paintings demonstrating the similarities and differences between painting and printmaking during Reinhardt’s all-important late period.
