Contemporary Print Group

New York, New York, 1933 - 1934

BiographyContemporary Print Group, an informal association of like-minded artists intent on using printmaking to address urgent social and political issues of the day. During its brief existence, from February 1933 through late 1934, the group offered subscriptions to two series of prints titled "The American Scene," each made up of six lithographs (a total of ten on stone and two on zinc), which were printed by George Miller and sent out to subscribers at monthly intervals. An article in the Art Digest on October 15, 1933, described the group's mission:

Actuated by opposition to the purist idea of "art for art's sake," the group is concerned positively with the belief that art has suffered from a limitation of its influence through its segregation from common human experience. It feels that art can and should appeal to the general masses as well as to the cultivated few, that economic and political phases of contemporary life and the conflict of social forces offer stimulating opportunities to the artist, and that in striving to make his work more socially significant the artist naturally seeks to enlarge his public.

[source: Philadelphia Museum of Art, http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/biography/15952.html, retrieved 2/4/2015]

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