Hammer Museum

This exhibition surveys over five hundred years of intaglio prints drawn from the extensive collections of the UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts at the Hammer Museum. The intaglio medium comprises engravings, etchings, drypoint, aquatint, and mezzotint, all of which involve the use of a copper or zinc plate which is incised, inked, and printed.

These materials and techniques have remained more or less the same since the fifteenth century, with artists employing similar methods to convey a wide range of subjects and styles, from the intricate religious and mythological scenes of the 1500s to the formal experimentation of the 21st century.

Groove includes more than eighty prints, organized chronologically, with important examples of Renaissance engraving by Albrecht Dürer and Giorgio Ghisi; major etchings of the Dutch baroque period by Rembrandt van Rijn; nineteenth- and twentieth-century prints by Stanley William Hayter, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Käthe Kollwitz, and Pablo Picasso; and contemporary etchings by Mark Bradford, Vija Celmins, Nicole Eisenman, Toba Khedoori, and Martin Puryear.


Groove: Artists and Intaglio Prints, 1500 to Now is organized by Cynthia Burlingham, deputy director of curatorial affairs, with Jennie Waldow, Luce Curatorial Fellow.