The Family

Glen Earl Alps

This impression is an early example of Glen Alps' abstract printmaking, using various intaglio techniques which Alps evolved into 'collagraphy', adding objects and materials to the surface of the plate and printing using a combination of intaglio and relief. Alps learned to experiment with intaglio techniques after studying for a time with Mauricio Lasansky at Iowa. He did a series of prints using the subject matter of chickens, which he then abstracted. Each impression varied in th coloring.

Alps began teaching in the Art Department of the University of Washington while he was still a graduate student and where he received his MFA. In 1947 the chairman of the department, Walter F. Jacobs, invited Alps to teach classes in watercolor and design as an acting associate of the school.

Beginning in the 1950s Alps became nationally and internationally known for his innovations in printmaking and for the development of unique matrices. Alps was one of the first artists to exhibit a “collagraph”, a term he coined, in 1958 at the Brooklyn Museum.

The first exhibition to show collagraphs by Alps and his students was a competitive print exhibition held in 1957 at the University of Washington's Henry Gallery. The first national exposure of a collagraph came in 1958, when Alps's "Chickens, Collagraph #12" was exhibited in the Brooklyn Museum's National Print Annual.