Silent Auction Lot #1: Clinton Adams

Clinton Adams (1918-2002)
Triad VI, 1980 (80-118)
Four-color lithograph on German Etching Paper
29″ × 21″
Collaborating Printer: Kate Leavitt
Signed lower right
Estimate $2500-5000

From the Collection of Ray Graham

Clinton Adams (1911-2002)

Adams met June Wayne, the founding director of Tamarind, when they were both making lithographs at Lynton Kistler’s print studio in Los Angeles. Together with June Wayne and Garo Antreasian, Adams was among the founders of Tamarind Lithography Workshop, and served as the Associate Director during the first years of the enterprise. In 1961, Adams became Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico. When Tamarind moved to the University of New Mexico in 1970, Adams served as its director until his retirement in 1985. He was actively involved in the University as a professor and administrator while he continued to pursue his research interests in early American lithography. He authored a number of books on the subject, and coauthored with Garo Antreasian, The Tamarind Book of Lithography: Art and Techniques (Harry N. Abrams, 1971), which was, for many years, considered the primary authoritative text on the subject.

As a painter and printmaker, Clinton Adams produced a mix of traditional representation and Modernist abstraction. He had more than 30 solo exhibitions, and his work is included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others.