10 New Editions to Collect at the IFPDA Print Fair 2022

Few art fairs feature the range that one finds at the IFPDA Print Fair. Old Master etchings, mid-century lithographs, and innovative editions by contemporary artists are all on view this week as the fair returns to New York’s Javits Center for its 29th edition, from October 27th through 30th—its first in-person presentation since 2019.

“Online viewing rooms and fairs were a great way for us to support our members during COVID, but there is nothing like seeing art in person,” said Jenny Gibbs, executive director of IFPDA. “It goes beyond variations in screen color or missing texture, layers, and scale. Only in person can you experience what Walter Benjamin called the ‘aura’ of the artwork. It is so exciting to finally see work in person that you’ve only known online.”

Gibbs continued, “We are seeing some incredibly rare works in the booths of our Old Master and modern dealers, who have had three years to build up amazing inventories of museum-quality work.” She also mentioned the wealth of new works that the fair’s publishers are presenting: “There were so many projects put on hold during COVID—look for new editions from Raymond Pettibon, Alison Saar, Derrick Adams, Julie Mehretu, Ed Ruscha, Hurvin Anderson, and many more.”

Indeed, at a moment when contemporary artists and galleries are particularly enthusiastic about creating limited editions, the IFPDA Print Fair is rife with fresh editions by today’s leading artists.

“Contemporary artists are drawn to printmaking because it offers a creative partnership unlike anything else in their studio practice,” Gibbs explained. “The best master printers are technicians, artists, therapists, and sometimes seemingly magicians. Imagine having this magical person who is there to be the midwife to your idea, helping you get your vision onto paper!” Contemporary printmaking, she added, “has also really challenged the notion of what a print could or should be, with ever-expanding possibilities for tools and technologies, while keeping traditional techniques like etching and intaglio very much alive.”

Gibbs notes that this year’s fair reflects the art world’s esteem for figuration and artists of color, with works by artists including Elizabeth Catlett, Emma Amos, Derrick Adams, and Amy Sherald. “There is also an ongoing tradition of Black abstraction,” she added, “carried forward by the amazing prints of Martin Puryear, Rashid Johnson, and Stanley Whitney, to name just a few.”

Here, we highlight a few of the fresh, standout editions that are on offer at the IFPDA Print Fair 2022.

Judy Chicago, What if Women Ruled The World?, 2022

Solo Impression

This Judy Chicago print may look familiar, but the artist’s collaboration with Solo Impression is certainly new. Chicago explained that the work combines digital printing on fabric with embroidery on an image derived from the “Female Divine” project she made for Dior’s January 2020 couture show in Paris. Chicago worked with master printer Judith Solodkin, who founded Solo Impression in 1975. At the fair, Solodkin will present live demonstrations of this printmaking process, which integrates printing on fabric with digital embroidery.

“Judith Solodkin was just starting the master printer program when I made prints at Tamarind [Institute] in 1972,” Chicago said. “As she was the first woman to successfully navigate that program, I was always interested in what she did and am happy to be working with her at Solo Impression.”

Katherine Bernhardt, Pikachu, 2022

David Zwirner

Known for her effervescent paintings of pop culture characters and everyday foodstuffs, beloved painter Katherine Bernhardt has created two new lithographs that playfully reenvision Pokémon cards. Published by David Zwirner’s Utopia Editions, in collaboration with Counter Editions, the prints are a part of the artist’s most recent body of work, which draws in part on the current interests of her son, who recently started his own Pokémon card collection. These 10-color lithographs, each an edition of 65, feature Pikachu and Ditto, and stay true to Bernhardt’s joyful, spray-painted style.

Hurvin Anderson, “The Attic,” 2022

Durham Press, Inc.

Hurvin Anderson’s new series of monotypes, titled “The Attic,” is an extension of his painting practice, particularly his “Peter” series.In it, the artist documented Afro-Caribbean barber shops that were set up in attics. These spaces became meaningful social enclaves for Anderson and his family, who emigrated to the U.K. from Jamaica. These prints borrow that imagery, representing human life via blocky interiors infused with nostalgia and personality. The “Attic” monotypes, filled with blocks of vivid blue patterns, demonstrate Anderson’s expressive take on abstraction and his iterative approach to artmaking.

Julie Mehretu, Corner of Lake and Minnehaha (blue), 2022

Highpoint Editions

One of a series of prints titled “Corner of Lake and Minnehaha,” this stunning screenprint exemplifies Julie Mehretu’s practice of engaging with contemporary moments—in this case, the murder of George Floyd.

“Current events and unfolding histories have long informed Mehretu’s practice,” explained Siri Engberg, senior curator and director of visual arts at the Walker Art Center. “Her most recent works are propelled by her reaction to urgent crises in our present moment, and how the media’s framing of these conditions impacts society. From the incessant stream of daily imagery we consume of violence, injustice, warfare, and environmental disasters, Mehretu seeks out resonant photographs—of fires raging simultaneously in California and Myanmar in 2017, for example; or in the case of this print, an image from the civil unrest in Minneapolis on May 28, 2020, following the murder of George Floyd.”

Mehretu digitally alters and crops these found photographs, then transforms them through her own gestural marks and washes of color. She started working on this print series in 2019 with master printer Cole Rogers and the Highpoint Editions team.

Tomory Dodge, Monotype 18, 2022

Flying Horse Editions/UCF

This playful, pink-hued watercolor monotype by Tomory Dodge is typical of the artist’s practice, which often features bold, gestural marks in contrasting colors. With its rapid scribbles and translucent brushstrokes, the piece displays the range of line and form that the artist can channel into a single work. Created at Flying Horse Editions, which is located at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, this print is one of several new works the artist is showing at the fair. Dodge’s work is held in the collections of major museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Jonas Wood, Bonsai, 2022

Aliso Editions

Aliso Editions co-published this Jonas Wood print, along with two others, with WKS Editions for Printed Matter. The first work from this collaboration, also featured at the fair, depicts bananas; the series takes visual cues from the format and proportion of a Polaroid picture. The 13-color silkscreen Bonsai, an edition of 200, builds upon one of Wood’s most revered subjects—plants—though his explorations into the bonsai are only recent. The clean, stylized image, with its crisp colors and sharp lines, is a classic example of the artist’s satisfying depictions of everyday life.

Ed Ruscha, Sign in a Rainstorm, 2021

Crown Point Press

This work, an edition of 40, is the second in Ed Ruscha’s series of sign prints that he began in 2019. The other signs convey the messages “Lonely Highway,” “Sign in a Sandstorm,” and “Sign in a Mudstorm.”The works are inspired by the signs Ruscha sees every day driving around Los Angeles, or on long drives to his studio in the Mojave Desert or to Oklahoma. A master of text-based work, Ruscha toys with the notion of signs as literal and figurative markers of hope, motivation, and warning.

Delita Martin, Still Hold Me Close (Self-portrait), 2021

Galerie Myrtis

This dazzling self-portrait by Delita Martin is a unique work that incorporates relief printing, charcoal, acrylic, hand-stitching, and decorative papers. It shows the artist occupying what she describes as “liminal landscapes defined by color, pattern, and texture. These varying landscapes, or what I refer to as ‘veilscapes,’ are where the spirit world and the waking world exist simultaneously. I overlap the portrait and patterned ‘veilscapes’ to show how women transition into the spirit world as they become the spiritual other.”

Martin is known for figurative mixed-media works that thoughtfully portray and celebrate women of color. “I believe my work presents a humble and lasting awareness of the diversity among women of color,” Martin said. “They are a gathering of sisters, mothers, daughters, and women that show an eternal resolve to define love, passion, and humanity. These women challenge us to reflect on the deeper meaning behind surviving life’s obstacles.”

Derrick Adams, Eye Candy, 2022

Tandem Press

A major highlight of this year’s fair is a monumental, site-specific installation by Derrick Adams, commissioned by IFPDA and produced with Tandem Press. “I decided to create a work that I’ve been imagining for some time as a large-scale, immersive five-panel work,” Adams explained. “The piece, titled Eye Candy, is inspired by a vintage male underwear advertisement. The transformed image and installation exaggerates the provocative nature of the source imagery—bringing the Black male figure to life in a repeated, colorful, and hypnotic presentation.”

Tandem Press is also presenting several new prints by Derrick Adams, including Eye Candy (2022), an iteration of the large-scale work featuring the same underwear-clad man with a large rainbow lollipop hovering in the air before him, covering one eye.

Huma Bhabha, Untitled, 2010

Peter Blum Gallery