Tiber Press: The New York School

In 1960, Tiber Press published an extraordinary set of artists' books, pairing New York School painters Joan Mitchell, Alfred Leslie, Michael Goldberg and Grace Hartigan with renowned poets John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara and James Schuyler. This publication is considered one of the most significant collaborations between artists and poets of the era.

 

Tiber Press was founded in 1953 by Floriano Vecchi, Richard Miller and Daisy Aldan to promote collaboration between poets and artists of the New York School. The Tiber Press New York School set is considered one of the key American artists' books. The artists and poets featured in this Set went on to become the giants in their field, representing a period of innovation, experimentation and collaboration.

 

In this series of four artists' books, the choice of partners between poets John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara and James Schuyler with second-generation Abstract Expressionists Joan Mitchell, Alfred Leslie, Michael Goldberg and Grace Hartigan was left to the artists and writers themselves. In doing so, each pair acknowledged a commonality in their work. For Joan Mitchell and Michael Goldberg, it was their first exercise in printmaking. For John Schuyler, it was his first collection of poems.

 

Each volume consists of forty pages and contains five prints: one on the cover, one on the title page and three interspersed throughout the book. The prints were made directly on the screens by the artists, and the text was handset and printed by Brüder Hartmann in West Berlin on handmade Hahnemühle paper. The set was created in an edition of 200 numbered copies, signed by the poets and painters. All four volumes are jacketed in molded acetate and boxed together in a linen slipcase.

 

Editions of the Tiber Press series are represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Morgan Library and Museum, New York; Columbia University Library, New York; the Spencer Collection, New York Public Library; the Yale University Library, New Haven; the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge; the Toledo Museum of Art; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among others.