Selected Works from the University Art Collection

Atelier Project (1983-1986)

The Atelier Project, a collection of sixteen prints by distinguished American artists, was conceived and executed by the Division of Visual Arts at the State University of New York at Purchase. The participating artists represent a variety of styles, span a broad age range, and show a willingness to explore a printmaking medium unfamiliar to them. The organizers envisioned the process of creating this portfolio as a learning experience for the artists, the students who assisted them, and the university community. The donation of this portfolio to the University at Albany, as well as to the other campuses of the State University of New York in 1987, furthered the goals of the organizers by continuing the role of the portfolio as an educational tool for the public.

Portfolio 9

In 1967, Irwin Hollander printed and published a portfolio of nine original lithographs by artists whose prints represented the great diversity and character of the art of lithography in the United States. Hollander persuaded painters and sculptors to work collaboratively with master printers in his studio. The resulting prints come to life, existing brilliantly as colorful and persuasive images. Portfolio 9 has been acclaimed for the consistently high quality of workmanship and the wide stylistic range it exhibits.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo (American, born 1902)

Manuel Alvarez Bravo is one of the great modern masters of photography. Born in Mexico in 1902, Alvarez Bravo has been recording his native land for more than eighty years, capturing its people, topography, and history. In a single decade, from 1920-1930, Alvarez Bravo quickly completed a long aesthetic journey. He rejected the pictorial aesthetic of his predecessors in favor of a vigorous modernism, based on the principle that photographs should not look like paintings but like photographs. Alvarez Bravo's images work on many levels: they capture the instant while possessing a timeless quality; they can be both real and abstract; and they serve as documentary depictions as well as fine art.

John Held, Jr. (American, 1889-1958)

John Held, Jr. is considered both a satirist and champion of the era that he documented-- the "Roaring 20s." He is best known for creating magazine and cover art for some of the most popular magazines of the day: Judge, Puck, Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, and Life. His gentle satires and witty caricatures became enormously popular in an age when societal mores were loosening and people were looking to have a good time. In addition to his magazine art, Held created a series of wry narrative blockprints that graphically exposed the underside of daily life in Victorian America.