Western Graphics

Western Graphics Workshop opened its doors in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1975. Over the next four decades, the print workshop provided space for both Native American and non-Native artists to produce lithographs of the American West. Historically, artistic representations of this region offered romanticized visions of colonial settlement. At Western Graphics, artists produced works that transformed the genre, using the medium of lithography to ask what and who makes up the American West. The prints in these galleries propose diverse answers to these questions.

The distinctive artistic ecosystem of northern New Mexico shaped the work produced at Western Graphics. The workshop was part of a revival in the United States of fine art lithography—a printmaking process known for its rich textures, gestural lines, and its ability to mimic other artistic mediums. This movement was sparked by the founding in 1960 of the influential Tamarind Workshop (later Institute) and its permanent move to Albuquerque in 1970. Ben Q. Adams, founder of Western Graphics, was certified as a master printer at Tamarind. Over the decades, Adams worked especially with artists who trained at Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), a program that shaped a new generation of Native modernists. Working closely with Western Graphics’s skilled printers, the artists in this exhibition created new visions of the land that they shared.