Prints from South Africa at The Art Museum, MSU

Sunday, 09 September 2007 21:12

EAST LANSING, MI –– The Art Museum at Michigan State University will exhibit Prints from South Africa in the Works on Paper Gallery through October 14, 2007.

In Grahamstown, on the Eastern Cape of South Africa, artists work at a printmaking workshop sponsored by the Egazini Outreach Project, a community-based art, cultural and heritage center. In their powerful linocuts, these artists share a strong graphic sense that equalizes black and white and uses a wide range of stroke patterns. Their stories are very real and often have political implications. They tell of drought, of hope in the midst of despair, of leisure activities, women’s work, and struggles for equality and show glimpses of life as it was and as it is today.

The expressive and rough cut woodcut and linocut techniques reference the last century’s German Expressionist prints of equal power and presence while their subject matter has much in common with WPA prints of the 1930s and 1940s as well as Mexico’s Taller Grafica prints from the 1940s through 1960s.

In addition to five prints now in MSU’s Art Museum collection, this Works on Paper exhibition includes ten prints on loan courtesy of the Sragow Gallery, New York. Egazini prints were first shown in South Africa in 2000, in the United States in 2003, but have rarely been exhibited since.

The Art Museum at MSU is located within Kresge Art Center, at the intersection of Physics and Auditorium Roads between the Alumni Chapel and the MSU Auditorium on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI. Museum hours are Monday through Friday, 10 to 5 p.m., Thursday until 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. For additional information, call (517) 355-7631 or visit www.artmuseum.msu.edu.