Crown Point Press

Crown Point Press presents Only Black and White, a group exhibition that explores the intricacies of black and white prints. Featuring a diverse group of artists, the exhibition highlights the significance of line, tone, and expression in the absence of color, inviting a deep engagement with form and contrast. The works showcase the artists’ ability to balance simplicity and complexity using only the monochrome palette, revealing profound depth and subtle nuance.

Crown Point Press announces two complementary exhibitions. One features new etchings by Rupy C. Tut and the other prints by four figurative artists: Mamma Andersson, Marcel Dzama, Chris Ofili, and Shahzia Sikander. These artists enliven and expand the figurative tradition while reflecting on contemporary issues.

Crown Point Press is pleased to release its first project with Oakland-based artist Rupy C. Tut. In the spring of 2024 in the Press’s etching studio, Tut created her first intaglio prints during a two-week residency. Tut is influenced by 18th century traditional Indian painting and was trained in the techniques of that period. She creates densely colorful figurative paintings which reflect social and contemporary issues of motherhood, feminism, patriarchy, identity and the environment. To create the paintings, Tut transfers line drawings onto hemp paper or linen and hand-mixes her palette from raw pigments. In the Crown Point studio, she used hard ground and soft ground etching to create fine lines and the aquatint technique for color. In these six new etchings, Tut melds traditional forms, exquisite line drawing, and rich color to tell personal stories about the landscape and the female figure. She has said, "I strive to center the narrative around female characters who are struggling but resilient, facing hardships but also bolstered by support systems, and tackling patriarchal challenges while also setting examples of winning the fight." In the print, A matter of presence, Tut uses line work and movement to symbolize her experience of diving fearlessly into a new medium. Rupy C. Tut was born in northern India in 1985, and immigrated to California with her family in the late 1990s. She received a B.S. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2006 and a M.P.H from Loma Linda University in 2009. In 2016 she studied traditional Indian painting at Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, London. Her first solo exhibition was at the Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives, Ontario, Canada and most recently, her work was exhibited at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (Into View: New Voices, New Stories) and at the Fowler Museum, University of California, Los Angeles (Contemporary Sikh Art). Tut is the recipient of the 2024 SECA Award; her work will be shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in December 2024. She is represented by the Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco. Her work is in the collections of the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento; the de Young Museum, San Francisco; and the Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis.

To inaugurate the summer season, Crown Point presents Summer Choices, an exhibition that emphasizes the wide range of etching, the medium which the Press has specialized for more than half a century. The exhibition showcases an array of lively and bold images such as Al Held's intricate brightly colored woodblock print, Pachinko and Darren Almond's color photogravure of a tropical landscape, Fullmoon@Kitandara: Mountains of the Moon. Alex Katz’s aquatint, Black Shoes depicts feet in socks and sandals, and Robert Bechtle’s etching Mississippi Street Intersection captures an iconic San Francisco street scene of a VW bug atop a hill. Ed Ruscha's Lonely Highway offers a roadside billboard proclaiming “Gal chews same piece of gum since 1970.” The exhibition also includes a wall of etchings printed in various shades of blue, a color that epitomizes summer by its reference to sky and water. John Zurier’s predominantly blue etching Drifting evokes the depth and beauty of the ocean at evening. In Summer Pond, by Pat Steir, her richly gestural print blurs the line between reality and abstraction while the use of the grid adds structure against the kinetic drawing. Other artists included in the exhibition are William Bailey, John Chiara, Richard Diebenkorn, Leonardo Drew, Mary Heilmann, Jacqueline Humphries, Bryan Hunt, Markus Lupertz, David Nash, Pat Steir, Wayne Thiebaud, Catherine Wagner, and William T. Wiley.

Crown Point Press presents Gestural Language, an exhibition that brings together a group of artists who have pursued 20th century abstract painting using a variety of individualized visual languages. Characterized by gestural brush strokes or painterly mark making, the works of these artists make a case for the continued relevance of an almost one-hundred-year-old genre as a vital tradition of creation. On view at Crown Point Press April 4 - May 31, the exhibition includes prints by Pia Fries, Jacqueline Humphries, Janis Provisor, Laurie Reid, Amy Sillman, Pat Steir, Patricia Treib, Mary Weatherford, and Charline von Heyl.

Crown Point Press announces Jacqueline Humphries, an exhibition of new prints by the New York- based artist. Humphries created seven color etchings during her second Crown Point project in October 2023. The new prints are each nearly square, with a dot matrix background and a central splatter shape. The prints are untitled, qualified by the dominant color in parentheses, and Humphries’ choice of color in each print is uniquely subtle and varied. Layered hues vibrate against the staccato of dotted backgrounds and gestural foregrounds.

Crown Point Press announces six new small prints by Ed Ruscha and a special presentation of prints by Robert Bechtle in Winter Group Exhibition. Also on view are prints by Tomma Abts, Chris Burden, Julie Mehretu, Odili Donald Odita, Laurie Reid, Pat Steir, Wayne Thiebaud, Richard Tuttle and Fred Wilson

"Contemporary Scenes: Cityscape & Landscape" is an exhibition that presents ways in which artists of the 21st century engage with the ever-changing landscape, both real and imagined. Featured are 16 artists who continually reframe relationships to the planet, the precarious present, and the uncertain future.

Installed salon-style, the works in this exhibitioncome together to create a large statement while simultaneously each work invites intimate and contemplative engagement.

Crown Point Press announces "Hard Edges for Hard Times," an exhibition featuring five new etchings by Bay Area Conceptual artist Tom Marioni. In reference to the new prints, Marioni wrote, “In the 1960s, there was a cultural revolution. Minimalism was the art of the time. It was based on hard-edge painting and sculpture. Today, in the 2020s, we are in another cultural revolution. Everyone is an artist, and hard edges are back.”

Crown Point Press announces the release of Castiron Calendar, a new etching by Ed Ruscha. It is featured in a current exhibition About Words, that contains eleven of Ruscha’s etchings made between 2006 and 2023. Also on view are a selection of prints made between 1977 and 2019 by Robert Barry, Iain Baxter, Matt Mullican, Pat Steir and William T. Wiley. Each artist uses words as imagery to explore language and meaning visually.

Odili Donald Odita: Open Veil New Etchings

1962-2022: A Celebration: 60 Prints for 60 Years, currently on view in the Crown Point Gallery, celebrates the sixtieth anniversary of Crown Point Press. Over the years, since 1962, the Press has been located in four cities in the San Francisco Bay Area: Berkeley, Richmond, Oakland, and San Francisco. It has published prints by 113 artists and the exhibition is a testament to printmaking, to the artists who created the prints, and to the Crown Point staff who make their work possible

A summer group exhibition featuring prints by 19 artists

April 22, 2022 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Richard Diebenkorn (1922–1993). In memory of the artist, Crown Point Press presents a special exhibition featuring four working proofs of his most celebrated print, Green. The large aquatint was created in the Crown Point studio by Richard Diebenkorn in 1985. The proofs provide an intimate look at Diebenkorn’s process of developing the image, drawing the viewer into a visual history of the print’s creation.

Crown Point Press presents Color: A Spring Exhibition, etchings by eleven artists whose use of color is intentional and dramatic. These prints, with their grand gestures and vibrant colors, create a visual celebration.

Crown Point Press presents an exhibition of new photogravures by Bay Area artist/photographer Catherine Wagner. She completed her first project with Crown Point Press in the fall of 2021. Wagner is known for her observation and documentation of inanimate objects in series. She is interested especially in our collective history and the evidence of time’s passage and how culture is revealed through language and architecture. For her project at Crown Point she chose to work with small blocks of wood with their ends cut to emphasize the grain. "These elemental shapes serve as basic architectural gestures; foundational pieces constructed to define shape, space, and volume," Wagner said.  For this project, Wagner created a nine-panel print, five diptychs and three large single images.

Animals throughout the ages and across cultures have been depicted in art in every imaginable form. Often they are the embodiment of our desires, needs and hopes, and as domesticated pets they have taken on a larger-than-usual role during the COVID pandemic. Their relationship to humans has proved essential. In art, animals are inspirational, symbolic, allegorical, and supernatural. Crown Point Press presents Animals Among Us, a group exhibition that brings together 17 artists who have made prints with animals as subject. Birds are on display by Christopher Brown, Robert Kushner, Tom Marioni, Laura Owens, and Wayne Thiebaud. Jockum Nordstrom incorporates insects into a surreal landscape in the print titled House and Bugs. Nathan Oliveira’s Dogman is a richly textured drypoint of a dog superimposed on the profile of a man. The imagery “emphasizes the strong identification the artist perceives between the species: the human qualities of canines, the animal nature of humans,” wrote Joann Moser in the exhibition catalog, Nathan Oliveira (San Jose Museum of Art, 2002). A black, bumpy, comically menacing tropical frog stares at us in Plain Rain Frog, a photogravure by Susan Middleton. The velvety red and black Double Lunar Dogs by performance artist Joan Jonas are mirrored profiles of two regal canines.

Crown Point Press presents a fall group exhibition, Water. Now more than ever, sustainability and conservation are in the forefront of the discussion about the environment and this involves water in all its forms. In California, we are in an extreme drought with wild fires as a consequence, while in other parts of the country there are unusual rainfall and weather patterns. Water is ubiquitous in our everyday lives, and it has been emphasized in art throughout millennia. Water connects us. The prints in this exhibition remind us of its beauty, omnipotence, and influence—each artist responds uniquely to the subject of water.

Five new color etchings

Crown Point Press announces the release of a new etching, "Sign in a Rainstorm", by Ed Ruscha. It is the third print in a series of images of signs that Ruscha has been working on. The first print in the series is "Lonely Highway", published in 2019, and the second is "Sign in a Sandstorm", 2021. These signs can be seen as hopeful. We are facing challenging times, but another sign ahead encourages us to keep going as we make our way down the road. Ruscha’s new prints introduce a group exhibition, "Signs of a Series", featuring ten other artists who have made prints in a serial format at Crown Point. The artists are Tomma Abts, Darren Almond, Tony Cragg, Jacqueline Humphries, Alyson Shotz, Pat Steir, Wayne Thiebaud, Patricia Treib, Richard Tuttle, and Charline von Heyl. Ranging from abstract to figurative, each series of prints encompasses the artist’s unique oeuvre.

Art can aid us in finding peace and balance in tough times. In this exhibition, we focus on prints that encourage a sense of grounding, which involves being present in the moment and intentional in thoughts and actions. By grounding ourselves, we can move forward into 2021 feeling centered, despite setbacks.

A selection of recent etchings by Wayne Thiebaud

Four new etchings by Alyson Shotz

A group exhibition of prints by sculptors

Crown Point Press announces its annual group exhibition, Summer Choices: The Joy of Discovery, which presents a collection of prints emphasizing the lighthearted feeling of the summer season. During these challenging times, art reminds us that we are together in our desire to be inspired by joy. Although the prints in this exhibition broadly differ in technique and concept, they share underlying themes of beauty, curiosity, happiness, and light.

A group show featuring six new etchings by Wayne Thiebaud and including prints by Darren Almond, Mamma Andersson, Robert Bechtle, John Chiara, Jane Freilicher, Yvonne Jacquette, Per Kirkeby and Pat Steir.

A group show of etchings and woodcuts by 38 artists whose works span the range of art genres that flourished during the booming decade of the 1980s.