ROBERT BLACKBURN

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  • Home
  • Works
    • Works 1930s
    • Works 1940s
    • Works 1950s
    • Works 1960s
    • Woodcuts 1960s -1990s
    • Works 1970s
    • Works 1980-2003
  • Biography
  • Contact
Picture
​Robert Blackburn, self-portrait, c.1970. Courtesy the Estate of Robert Blackburn

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Picture
Ronald Joseph, Robert Blackburn, c.1937. Lithograph, 15 3/4 x 12 1/8. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 1999 (1999.529.106). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY
Picture
Blackburn (second from left) with his press and fellow artists including Chaim Koppelman (sixth from left) and Thomas Laidman (third from right), 1955. Photograph by Louis Dienes. Courtesy RBPMW







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Picture
Robert Blackburn at ULAE, 1961. Photograph by Hans Naumuth. Used with the permission of ULAE
Picture
Krishna Reddy, assistant, and Blackburn, c.1974. Image courtesy RBPMW
Picture
Crew, Romare Bearden, and Blackburn during filming of “Bearden Plays Bearden,” 1980. Image courtesy RBPMW
Picture
Faith Ringgold (videotaping), Kay WalkingStick, Mel Edwards, Blackburn, and Juan Sánchez in Cairo, 1994. Photograph by Karl Peterson. Courtesy the Estate of Robert Blackburn
December 10, 1920
Robert Hamilton Blackburn is born in Summit, NJ
 
1920–1925
Blackburn family lives in Summit, NJ
 
1925–1927
Blackburn family lives in Elmira, NY
 
1927
Blackburn family settles in Harlem, NY
 
1934
Classes at the Harlem Art Workshop, 135th Street NYPL
 
1934–1935
Classes in the Arts & Crafts Department, Harlem YMCA
 
1934–1938
Attends Charles Alston’s “306” salon
 
1933–1936
Attends Frederick Douglass Junior High School/P.S. 139
 
1937–1938
Classes at Augusta Savage’s “Uptown Arts Laboratory”
 
1936–1939
Attends DeWitt Clinton High School, Bronx
 
June 1936–June 1939
Blackburn’s work is frequently reproduced in “Magpie,” the art and literary magazine of DeWitt Clinton High School

November 1937
Harlem Community Art Center opens (a FAP-WPA facility)
 
1938
Lithography classes at Harlem Community Art Center
 
May 1938
Blackburn sweeps Scholastic Magazine’s national art competition and is noted in the New York Times
 
June 1939
Graduates from DeWitt Clinton High School
 
September 1940–June 1943
Attends the Art Students League
 
1943–1947
Works odd jobs
 
June–July 1944
Moves downtown to W. 48th Street, then to W. 24th Street

October 1947
Acquires his own lithographic press at 111 W. 17th Street, 4th Floor. Calls his home workshop the “Bob Blackburn Workshop,” and sometimes the “Creative Lithographic Workshop”
 
1950–1951
Drawing classes with Wallace Harrison
 
1951–1952
Will Barnet produces experimental multi–stone color lithographs in collaboration with Blackburn, at Blackburn’s workshop, that are noted by Art News magazine
 
1952
Includes intaglio processes in his workshop, after Stanley William Hayter of Atelier 17 (who relocated to New York from 1940-1950) returns to Paris
 
1953–1954
Receives John Hay Whitney Fellowship to work at Atelier Desjobert, Paris.
Blackburn travels in France, Italy, and Switzerland
 
Late 1954–1955
Returns to New York and his Workshop

1957–1963
Serves as the first master printer for ULAE, West Islip, producing the first 79 editions of that workshop.
 
1960s
Begins to work extensively in woodcut
 
1963
Advertises his shop as “The Creative Graphic Workshop”
 
1968
Relocates to 248 W. 23rd Street. Participates in founding the Lower East Side Printshop
 
1971 
Incorporates “The Printmaking Workshop, Inc.” (PMW) as a not–for–profit institution

Late 1975–early 1976
PMW moves to 114 W. 17th Street, 3rd Floor
 
1978
Participates in founding the Asilah Workshop, Morocco

1987
Receives the Skowhegan Governors Award for Lifetime Service to the Arts
 
December 1987     
PMW moves to 55 W. 17th Street, 3rd Floor
 
1988
Travels to Sweden and produces a lithograph. Blackburn and PMW receive a Governor’s Art Award from the New York State Council on the Arts
 
1989
Blackburn is a guest artist at the Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia
 
1992
Receives a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship

1994
Elected a National Academician by the National Academy of Design, NY. Travels to Egypt with a group of artists and a PMW exhibition representing the U.S. at the 5th International Cairo Biennial
 
September 1997
PMW moves to 19 W. 24th Street, 9th Floor
 
March 10, 1998
Print Collection moves to off-site warehouse
 
2000
Blackburn makes prints at Dieu Donné Papermill, NY. Receives the Lee Krasner Award, from the Pollock–Krasner Foundation
 
2001
PMW closes. Agreement is signed with Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (EFA) at 323 W. 39th Street that the “Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop” (RBPMW) will become a program of EFA. Agreement is signed with Library of Congress, Washington D.C., to deposit over 2,500 works
 
2002
Blackburn is commissioned to produce mosaics for the MTA Lexington Avenue Line #6 subway station
 
April 21, 2003
Robert Blackburn dies in New York City
 
2005
RBPMW opens on the 2nd Floor of EFA. MTA commission is unveiled

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