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LITHOGRAPHS

"In lithography my great excitement came from effects I can best describe as silvery, like ghosts of gray, grays faint yet fully drawn, with nuances that gave the appearance of images have been just breathed onto the stone, and from there with Burr [Miller]’s magic coaxed to the paper…When printing went smoothly the experience was deeply rewarding, a sense of well-being at having brought to life a vision that could have gone wrong in so many ways, at so many moments. These times were like gifts from an unpredictable printing god, and were the events that made painful failures endurable. It was essential to know my goals could be reachable."    - Robert Kipniss, 2002

From 1968 to 1994, Kipniss created lithographs that followed the style and content of his paintings, whether generally or specifically. A commission from a print publisher in 1968 for five editions of lithographs precipitated his adoption of lithography as a medium.

Kipniss's first lithographs were done in black and white, but by 1970 he was also working in color. He taught himself "to lay in the most delicately light silvery tones on the surface of the limestone by maintaining an exceptionally sharp point on the lithographic pencil and drawing with no pressure other than the weight of the pencil itself." He built up a support so that his hand and wrist could "dangle" over the stone. By 1994 Kipniss had completed about 450 editions of lithographs, usually of 90 to 250 impressions, at the Burr Miller studio in Manhattan. He worked from 1969 with master printer Burr Miller and then with Steve and Terry, his sons.

In 1980 Kipniss began to draw on aluminum to make all of his lithographs, and by 1986 he was achieving an increased subtlety in the use of color with a light palette including "greens, blues, pinks, browns, and grays," as a critic noted that year. He added: "Kipniss enhances the remarkable purity and elegance of line in these lithographs by his restrained use of color. The delicate hues of his prints are of such extraordinary subtlety that it is only on careful examination that the viewer can recognize how complex they are, requiring as many as eight different plates to produce a single print." In 1994 Kipniss's concern with densely drawn fine tones led to increased difficulties in printing, and he gave up the medium.

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