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Buy the Whole Damn Thing: The Tyler Collection

A photo taken from above of a man operating a hydraulic lithography press

Kenneth Tyler operating his custom-designed hydraulic lithography press during edition printing of Nicholas Krushenick's Fairfax and mustard, GEL workshop, Los Angeles, California, September, 1965. Kenneth E Tyler Collection archive, NGA Study Collection.

One of the National Gallery’s longest and most important collecting relationships, with printmaker Kenneth Tyler, was forged before the Gallery had even opened. Featuring 78 artists, from Roy Lichtenstein to Helen Frankenthaler, the collection includes more than 7400 works of art and 120,000 archive photographs. David Greenhalgh — Assistant Curator, Kenneth E Tyler Collection, Prints and Drawings — shares how it all came to call the Gallery home.

David Greenhalgh
11 August 2022
In The Kenneth Tyler Collection
Read time 20 minutes

From the late 1950s onwards, the most extraordinary changes occurred in American printmaking. The medium was everywhere and yet nowhere; the commercial applications of print were inescapable in daily life, but print workshops for artists, particularly lithography workshops, had nearly disappeared from the cultural landscape. The reasons for this were both material and cultural. Previous generations of printmakers had adopted new commercial methods of production and subsequently disposed of their rare and valuable lithography stones, which had become garden pavers or the bedrock for newly built freeways.1 At the same time, artists eschewed printmaking, since the medium’s reproducibility and association with commerce meant that many artists saw it as less authentic and of a lower value.

But change was in the air. In Los Angeles, the artist June Wayne, aware of lithography’s decline in the US, established Tamarind Lithography, a workshop that would almost single-handedly revive this dying artform. With the assistance of the Ford Foundation, Wayne invited artists to collaborate with a new generation of trainee printmakers. She arranged for these printmakers to be taught by Garo Antreasian, an Indianapolis artist who had taught himself lithography, alongside visiting European master printers, such as Pablo Picasso’s printer Marcel Durassier. Among the apprentice printers was Kenneth Tyler, the son of Hungarian migrants, who had decided to upturn his life working for Chicago’s steel industry to pursue a new career in the arts at the age of 32.

Tyler had previously shown great talent as an artist but had to forgo his arts education after being conscripted into the Korean War in 1952. Originally intending to become a jeweller, Tyler fortuitously met Antreasian in Chicago and was captivated by the soft, porous lithography stones he was working on, and so joined him at Tamarind Lithography, where he embarked on important research into the materials and technologies available to printers at the time. Extending his knowledge of the medium, Tyler swiftly rose to the role of artistic director of the workshop but found himself increasingly at odds with Wayne, who would restrict artists to conventions that best suited Tamarind’s role as a training institution. This drive to innovate compelled Tyler to strike out on his own, establishing a small studio, Gemini Limited, in the back of a framing store in the heart of Hollywood. Tyler quickly began to design new hydraulic lithography presses that could achieve larger images with flat consistent colour, dragging lithography from its historical status as a handmade craft into the twentieth century, with what curator Judith Goldman would call ‘a future-oriented industrial aesthetic’. 2

In a previously unpublished statement from 1970, Tyler remarked:

'It is my belief that if in our present cybernetic society the accent is on technology and automation… The contemporary artist uses new materials and technology and does not conform to traditions of the past. Therefore, if the artist is to successfully collaborate with a printer, the printer must be capable of employing new materials and techniques which are closely linked with today’s technology.' [3]

Opening in 1965, Gemini Limited adopted an artist-led philosophy. Instead of confining projects to the restrictive traditions of printmaking, Tyler actively sought artists that would ‘make demands on the medium’4 and looked to engineer the solutions to their creative ambitions. Joining with business partners Stanley Grinstein and Sidney Felsen in 1966, the workshop was renamed Gemini Graphic Editions Limited, becoming a publishing house. With Tyler as master printer, Gemini created prints drastically changed the scale and ambition of lithography. Notable examples include Jasper Johns’s 1969 Color Numerals series, mechanically inked in a spectrum of colour with translucent whites, and Robert Rauschenberg’s Booster 1967, the largest hand-pulled lithograph at the time. The technical achievements of the workshop established Tyler as ‘the most renowned and influential master printer’5 of the time.

But misfortune would befall the workshop, as relations began to break down between Tyler and the new directors, Grinstein and Felsen. As Tyler drafted in a letter in 1973:

'I am writing this letter to you with a great deal of difficulty and with considerable sorrow… I am now at the point where I am no longer employed by Gemini and am in no position to affect the technical and aesthetic qualities of the prints being produced.' [6]

Leaving Gemini, Tyler looked to establish a new workshop to continue his ambitious program of artist collaborations. Such an endeavour was costly and forced Tyler to consider auctioning off one impression of each editioned work he had produced to raise the funds. Word began to spread of this upcoming sale and reached the Australian-born, New York-based art critic Robert Hughes. Hughes, aware that the Australian National Gallery was beginning an ambitious program to build a national collection, contacted the founding director, James Mollison, to alert him to Tyler’s auction. Hughes saw this as an ‘important opportunity for Australia to gain a collection of modernist, especially American prints’.7 When the surrealist painter James Gleeson (then the head of the Acquisitions Committee) learnt of Tyler’s print collection, he is said to have exclaimed: ‘Buy the whole damn thing!’8

In December 1973, Mollison met Tyler in New York with the objective of calling off the auction by purchasing the entire collection. The significance of Australia’s newly established National Gallery owning the entirety of Tyler’s output became apparent to them both. It would become a collection of prints that no other gallery could replicate, and the prospect of continuing the collecting relationship into the future could provide a complete vision of a remarkable shift in American art of the twentieth century.

Mollison successfully purchased Tyler’s collection of 660 prints, rare proofs, and drawings, later writing to him:

'The impact the Gemini prints will make in this country is something I am sure you do not realise. Items which looked spectacular to us when we saw them in America have in isolation taken on a weight and importance.' [9]

Over the years, their correspondence continued, with the Gallery continuing to purchase the output of Tyler’s new workshop, Tyler Graphics Limited on America’s east coast. The collecting was sporadic until 2001, when Dr Jane Kinsman, the National Gallery’s Head of International Art, made a major acquisition that would grow the Tyler Collection to more than 7400 works. Containing prints by celebrated artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, David Hockney and James Rosenquist, this addition continued to tell the story of the evolution of contemporary printmaking. To supplement the works of art acquired, Tyler decided to gift his archive, including supporting documents that trace in minute detail the technical accomplishments of the works, to the Gallery. This archive also contains more than 120,000 photographs and hundreds of hours of film that capture the artists and printmakers at work. Dr Kinsman’s research background working with archaeologist Arthur Dale Trendall to identify ancient Greek vase painting gave her the foresight to recognise the value of such archival documents to understanding print history. 10

The National Gallery’s Kenneth Tyler Collection forms a near-complete record of one of print history’s major turning points, born from a collaborative relationship between Tyler and successive gallery directors and staff. As Mollison noted, the Tyler Collection will ‘affect the future course of printmaking in this country’.11 That belief is shared by current Director Nick Mitzevich, who affirms that ‘the relationship between the National Gallery and Tyler is one of the most important in the institution’s history’.12

Kenneth Tyler with Robert Rauschenberg

Tamarind Lithography studio director June Wayne, with artist Josef Albers and Kenneth Tyler, 1963

Photograph of Nancy Graves and Kenneth Tyler

Nancy Graves and Kenneth Tyler, Tyler Graphics Ltd. artist’s studio, Bedford Village, New York, 1977. Photographer: Lindsay Green.

Marcel Durassier with Kenneth Tyler

Kenneth Tyler with Roy Lichtenstein

Black and white photo of Frank Stella and Kenneth Tyler inking relief sections of a ‘Swan engraving’ plate and wiping the plate with scraps of newsprint

Frank Stella and Kenneth Tyler inking relief sections of a ‘Swan engraving’ plate and wiping the plate with scraps of newsprint, Tyler Graphics Ltd., Bedford Village, New York, 1981. Photo: Lindsay Green

Black and white photograph of Paul Jenkins and Kenneth Tyler in front of a proof from Jenkins' 'Katherine wheel' series

Paul Jenkins and Kenneth Tyler in front of a proof from Jenkins' 'Katherine wheel' series, Tyler Graphics Ltd., Bedford Village, New York, 1979. Photograph: Lindsay Green

A couple embrace in front of a colourful artwork

Kenneth Tyler and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler in front of Frank Stella’s ‘Juam’, in the Tyler Graphics artist studio, 1997

A photograph of Joan Mitchell and Kenneth Tyler sitting on chairs in an artist studio.

Marabeth Cohen-Tyler ‘Kenneth Tyler and Joan Mitchell in the Vétheuil studio’, 1992

Photo of Nick Mitzevich shaking hands with Kenneth Tyler

This story has been published as part of the National Gallery's 40th Anniversary. For more visit 40 Years.

  1. Tatyana Grosman of Universal Limited Art Editions print studio would find her first lithographic limestone paving her garden pathway, while Kenneth Tyler of Gemini Graphic Editions Limited would recall the fate of many lithography stones in the construction of the Newport Cincinnati freeway.
  2. See Judith Goldman, ‘Twenty-five years of American prints and printmaking: 1956-81’ in Andrew Stasik (ed.). ‘American Prints and printmaking 1956-1981. Print review 13. Pratt Graphics Center, 1981. p. 11
  3. Kenneth Tyler quoted in Joyce Toy & Barbara Jones, Kenneth Tyler: Master printer, Gemini GEL. Unpublished manuscript from January 1970. Kenneth Tyler Collection archives B71.1. p. 3
  4. Pat Gilmour, Kenneth Tyler: master printer and the American print renaissance, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 1986. p. 48
  5. Donald Karshan, The artist and master printer: Innovation by collaboration. Daytona Beach Community College, 1989. p. 2
  6. Draft letter from Kenneth Tyler to Gemini GEL artists dated November 1973. Kenneth Tyler Collection archive. A19.5
  7. Robert Hughes in conversation with curator Jane Kinsman 13 February 2002, quoted in draft manuscript for Workshop: The Kenneth Tyler Collection. National Gallery of Australia, 2016.
  8. Ibid
  9. Telegram from James Mollison, the National Gallery’s first director to master printer Kenneth Tyler, 30 January 1974. NGA file 73/4882-01
  10. Dr Jane Kinsman in conversation with the author, December 2018.
  11. Telegram from James Mollison, the National Gallery’s first director to master printer Kenneth Tyler, 30 January 1974. NGA file 73/4882-01
  12. See Nick Mitzevich’s Director’s Forward to Anja Loughhead, Joan Mitchell: World’s of colour. 2021. National Gallery of Australia, p. 9

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