Harry van Kuyk - 8 litho's (7 x gesigneerd) Boek Nymph - elfde bibliofiele - 1996

8 Lithographs by Harry van Kuyk (7 of which are signed). Eleventh bibliophile private edition. Year: 1996. Number: 22/24.
Book dimensions: H52 x 34cm. Seven lithographs plus the colophon are hand signed by van Kruiningen. The first lithograph (in front) is unsigned. The authenticity of the work offered is fully guaranteed. A certificate of authenticity can be emailed upon request.


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Already during his secondary school years, Harry van Kuyk was apprenticed to a small printer in his hometown – this typifies his enduring passion for graphic technology and printing. He is educated at the Graphic School in Amsterdam. He then worked for fifteen years in the printing industry, including at major Haarlem printers and publishers such as Boom-Ruygrok and Joh. Enschedé (as hand setter and foreman) and the Nijmegen magazine division of De Gelderlander (as designer and layout man). At the same time, he draws, paints and photographs, makes graphics on a small scale and is proficient in graphic design. Privately, he carries out artistic and design assignments for companies, municipalities and private individuals.

In 1965 he established himself as an independent graphic artist in Bemmel, near Nijmegen. He participates in regional exhibitions of figurative graphics and drawings, and comes into contact with painters, sculptors and graphic artists such as Theo Elfrink, Klaas Gubbels, Rob Terwindt, Oscar Goedhart, Ed van Teeseling and the artist-critic Maarten Beks. In the meantime, he experiments extensively with graphic techniques.

In 1969 he succeeded in producing prints with an extreme relief (up to 20 millimeters) on special thick rag paper. Initially he called them 'prägedruk' (after the German for blind printing), a common concept in modern graphics at the time. However, due to a number of essential technical differences, he quickly and definitively speaks of 'relief printing'.

Embossed (two rectangles per square, 6 layers x 6 rows)
1970
paper
65 × 50 cm (size passe-partout)
edition 7

His white, geometric-abstract prints, characterized by light and shadow, have been a great success since 1970. They are compared with the white wall reliefs and objects by Ad Dekkers and Nul artist Jan Schoonhoven. 'The most obvious interpretation of Harry van Kuyk's sheets links them to Nul', writes art critic Lambert Tegenbosch in 1972. 'There is the same preference for white. There is often some seriality. There is the picturesquely conceived geometry. There is an element of mystery that is aroused by emptiness.'[2] In the early 1970s, artists such as Schoonhoven and Shlomo Koren came up with their own embossing variants of white, geometric series.

In 1971 Van Kuyk, supported by a substantial government subsidy, built his large relief printing press Aldus Manutius . He then prints large-format cohesive series with specific themes: geometry, typography, the golden ratio. He arranges the relief prints in cassettes, boxes and artist's books, such as Aldus Manutius (1971), Variaties op de Sectio Aurea (1972), Groot Abecedarium (1973), Tangram (1975) and Landscape (1980). He provides the publications with a textbook or text sheets with introductions and essays by art experts and journalists (Lambert Tegenbosch, GW Ovink, Joop Eilander, Wim Wennekes) or with poetry (by Hans Sternsdorff – known as Hans Ruf Jr. –, Hans Bouma). In addition, he produces numerous loose relief prints with geometric, lyrical-abstract and figurative forms. The editions are small: seven, ten or twenty copies, exceptionally sixty. Production is time consuming. He carries out a number of geometric relief prints on his own initiative as large white wall reliefs in wood (1973, 1975).

More than a hundred exhibitions at home and abroad (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, London, New York) follow. Some sales exhibitions sell out in a matter of weeks. National and international museums acquire his work. Groot Abecedarium was awarded silver in 1974 at the Third International Graphic Biennale in Frechen (West Germany). He moves his studio to Nijmegen. In 1980-1981 he is a guest critic of contemporary art for De Gelderlander .

After a five-month journey through Africa (1982-1983), he settled in Ooij, outside Nijmegen. His output declines, as do his exhibitions, but new relief editions and artist's books appear, including Bodoni Initiales (1993), Erografica (1995) and Novanu (2006). He has commissioned large, minimalist white wall reliefs in acrylic or wood, including for the town hall in Zevenaar (1985).

Since the 1990s, he has devoted himself to more classical graphic forms such as the drypoint (nudes), and to drawings, gouaches and pastels (nudes, landscapes). He writes essays and poetry for his art publications. He independently publishes ten collections of stories, travel reports and aphorisms. In 2007 he was appointed Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau. He died a year later in Nijmegen.

Relief print from Great Abecedarium (letter K)
1973
paper
65 × 50 cm (sheet size)
edition of 60Embossed

A relief print by Van Kuyk is often mistaken for an (extreme) blind print. Wrongly, because the techniques differ. A blind embossing is an inkless print with some relief (up to a few millimeters), made on a platen press (for relief printing) or an etching press (for intaglio printing). In a platen press, two plates ( platens) hit each other briefly and vigorously, so that the printing form leaves a relief in the applied paper. In an etching press, the printing form together with the paper is smoothly and horizontally rotated under a roller, so that the relief of the printing form is pressed into the paper.

An embossing is an (inkless) print with an extreme relief (5 to 20 millimeters), made on an embossing press (embossing press) using a mold and a counter shape (felt mats). A relief print combines high-pressure and intaglio printing: the relief is both in and on the paper. An embossing press works vertically: the printing form (a manually assembled mold with elements of zinc, steel or aluminum), a sheet of moist, thick, long-fibre paper and a few felt mats are stacked between two plates (stamps). Under high hydraulic pressure (up to 60 tons), with continuous heating (up to 70 °C), for one to two hours, the relief print is formed. The relief printing mold has been constructed so precisely, with ascending and descending segments, that the print paper does not tear. An embossing is the result of a delicate balance between mould, choice of paper, pressure, temperature and time.

Van Kuyk's procedure does not arise from the blind printing, but from the stereotypy. This is an early twentieth century widely used reproduction technique in the printing industry. Stereotypy (stereos = solid; typos = stamp, letter) is the method by which a gossamer mirror image of a page of lead type is made in special cardboard, under vertical, hydraulic pressure, on a heated embossing press. The cardboard printing form (mold) is then again cast in lead, so that a new printable page ('stype', in printer's jargon) is created that is identical to the original lead type. In this way, exact copies of the same page can be placed on different presses at the same time, achieving higher print runs in a shorter time – profitable in the printing of newspapers, magazines and high-selling books. Around 1960 the stereotype disappears with the rise of offset printing; offset makes lead type superfluous and uses photography as a reproduction technique.

Stereotype: typesetting and mirror image copy (template)
Reclam-Verlag, Leipzig
1953
Photo Roger and Renate Rössing
Deutsche Fotothek

Through his many years of work in large commercial printers, Van Kuyk knew the stereotype from the inside out. As a pioneer, he translated the technique into graphic art in 1969. In the 1970s, various artists (Klaus van de Locht, Torkel Dahlstedt) made the process their own in his studio, at the press. But while embossing and other relief graphics have remained popular, embossing is rarely encountered due to its specialist skills.