October 20, 1932
The first exhibition of its kind to take place in New York City will be held at the Brooklyn Museum from October 20 to November 27, when lithographs by the pupils of Senefelder will be on display in the Library Gallery. Aloys Senefelder discovered the lithographic process 134 years ago by accident and it the course of the experiments which he conducted afterwards worked out practically every method used today. The following is his account of it:
“I had just ground a stone plate smooth in order to treat it with etching fluid and to pursue on it my practice in reverse writing, when my mother asked me to write a laundry list for her. The laundress was waiting, but we could find no paper. My own supply had been used up by pulling proofs. Even the writing ink was dried up. Without bothering to look for materials I wrote the list hastily on the clean stone with my prepared ink of wax, soap, and lamp black, intending to copy it as soon as paper was supplied.”
Senefelder was a writer with leanings toward the drama, but being poor he saw no way to present his work in the world unless he became his own publisher. In attempting to find a way of printing plays with engraved plates he stumbled on lithography as a solution.
Senefelder himself never did many prints, as he was interested in the development of the process and only statistics, regulations for schools, maps, and music scores, etc. He did, however, train a class of skilled printers during his life time and prints shown in this exhibition of which there are 157 were done by his pupils. There are among them 6 prints from a large portfolio published by Senefelder, Gleissner and Company, Munich in 1808. This was the first portfolio to appear before the public and is to be considered as the beginning of a general knowledge of lithography.
Among the most important lithographers shown are Nicholas Stiixner, Ferdinand Pilotty, Gottfied Engelmann, Joseph Selb, Max Wagenbrunner, Lorenz Quaglio.
From Germany the art of lithography spread to France and England. In this country until recent years it was used almost wholly for commercial purposes but today it is one of the leading media for artistic expression.
NOTE: The exhibition may be seen by press representatives on
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18 PHOTOGRAPHS AVAILABLE
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1931 - 1936. 07-12_1932, 055. View Original
