The Graphic Arts Loan Collection at UC Berkeley: 50 Years

Louis Marcoussis

Louis Marcoussis: Le comptoir (The Counter), 1920; etching and aquatint with drypoint; 6-1/2 x 8-1/4 in.; transferred from the Graphic Arts Loan Collection, the General Library, University of California, Berkeley.

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Morrison Library’s program of lending original works of art to UC Berkeley students. We celebrate this milestone with an exhibition of thirty-two prints that were once part of this renowned program and are now housed at BAM. These works range in date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with etchings by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1699) and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770), to the 1960s, including a lithograph by Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985). Among the works produced in the intervening years is the print by Louis Marcoussis (1878–1941) reproduced here.

An accomplished illustrator in Paris, in 1910 Marcoussis met the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and the painter and sculptor Georges Braque (1882–1963), who is also represented in the exhibition. His encounter with the Cubism of Braque and Picasso led Marcoussis to experiment with the new style in paintings and prints, while he continued to associate with the young poets of the period. The Surrealist poet Tristan Tzara later introduced Marcoussis to the artist Joan Miró (1893–1983), and it was in Marcoussis’s studio in 1938 that Miró created his etching Sun, Moon, and Stars, included in this exhibition. Miró later wrote to Marcoussis that he was “always thinking about this exciting technique of etching, which I will take up again . . . following your precious counsel.”

Stephanie Cannizzo
Curatorial Associate