Untitled abstraction (from "Untitled Suite A-H" of 8 images)

Jack Youngerman

This color abstraction by Jack Youngerman was done using screen printing in 1980. It is from an untitled portfolio of 8 images, each printed in different colors and numbered A - H. The work is a collaborative effort between Youngerman and printer Roni Henning at Henning Screenprint Workshop, in Brooklyn, NY. Henning is an early proponent of non-toxic ink screenprinting.

Printer Roni Henning commented about this work: "The woodblock look was printed separately from wood and then copied onto film and put on a screen and printed."

After college and with help from the G.I. Bill, Youngerman studied at the École des beaux-arts, Paris (1947–49), remaining in the city to paint until 1955. His years of apprenticeship in Paris were formative ones as he met and befriended fellow students César, Ellsworth Kelly, and Eduardo Paolozzi and visited the studios of Jean Arp and Constantin Brancusi, among others. While in Paris, he realized that he did not want to paint the “soft kind of abstract impressionism” that was prevalent in France in the years after World War II. Youngerman began to incorporate into his paintings the Hard-edge, geometric-abstraction, and Constructivist elements that would characterize his mature style.

In 1956, at gallerist Betty Parsons’s urging, Youngerman returned to the United States, settling in New York. Though working at the same time as the first generation of the New York school, Youngerman differed crucially from these artists by working at a slightly smaller scale and through his affinity for simplified organic forms and geometric abstraction. From 1959 to 1960, Youngerman was featured alongside such contemporaries as Jasper Johns, Kelly, and Frank Stella in 16 Americans at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1977, Youngerman expanded his production from painting and drawing to include freestanding cast fiberglass sculpture, and he later worked in steel and aluminum.