Over the course of the past 35 years, California-based fine art publisher Crown Point Press has established one of the finest reputations in the printmaking and publishing world. Founded by Kathan Brown, the press is most renowned for its innovative and experimental uses of the oldest and most traditional printmaking processes: etching and woodcut. Under Brown's direction, Crown Point's master printmakers have worked on an astonishingly broad array of projects, including those of John Cage, Tom Marioni, and Pat Steir. The press has also printed and published important minimalist and conceptual graphics, as well as editions by such painterly painters as Richard Diebenkorn, Francesco Clemente, and Helen Frankenthaler. More than 200 full-color, beautifully reproduced prints in this softcover volume document the entire history and development of Crown Point, confirming its unique and enduring contribution to the transformation of 20th-century printmaking.


Card catalog description
Crown Point Press, under the direction of Kathan Brown, is renowned for its use of the oldest, most traditional printmaking processes, etching and woodcut, in radically nontraditional ways. With painters, sculptors, and performance and conceptual artists - many of whom had never before made prints - the Press has produced works as varied as Tom Marioni's tracing of the sun's reflection on a copper plate and figurative images carved on woodblocks by traditional printmaking masters in Japan and China. During the past thirty-five years, Crown Point Press printed and published important Minimalist and Conceptual graphics as well as the significant prints of Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in 1991 brought the Archive of this great fine art publisher into its collection. Over 200 of these prints are illustrated in color in this book, which offers insight into the creative processes of the artists and candidly describes the development of the Press and the ways it helped transform the printmaking landscape of the twentieth century.


About the Author
Ruth Fine is Curator of Modern Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. Karin Breuer is Associate Curator of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, the prints and drawings department of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Steven A. Nash is Associate Director and Chief Curator of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

FROM THE PUBLISHER