Kip Gresham, who has died aged 72 of pancreatic most cancers, made and revealed prints of works by main British and worldwide artists. A pioneer in screen-printing expertise, he beloved collaborating: “The day-to-day actuality is considered one of soiled arms, unhealthy backs, stunning colors, seductive papers and, above all, surprises from the artists, these magicians,” he wrote. In his personal proper, he produced vibrant summary works.
He arrange his first studio, the Manchester Print Workshop, along with his fellow printmaker Steve Currie in 1975. His work with the artist Cecile Elstein featured within the exhibition A Printmaking Partnership (1991), on the metropolis’s Whitworth Gallery, and the painter and poet Adrian Henri was considered one of his many different collaborators from this era.
In 1982, Kip returned to his native Cambridge to determine the Chilford Corridor Press with the entrepreneur Sam Alper, designer of the Sprite caravan and founding father of the Little Chef restaurant chain.
The artists he labored with at Chilford, south-east of the town, included Elisabeth Frink, Terry Frost and Philip Sutton. Chilford Corridor Press merged with Stanley Jones’s Curwen Studio in 1989 to kind Curwen Chilford Prints. Kip added Gillian Ayres, Wilhelmina Barns Graham and Prunella Clough to his shopper record.
Throughout his time at Curwen Chilford, Kip developed a significant technological innovation, True-Grain, with Autotype Worldwide (now MacDermid Autotype). True-Grain was a textured sheet of polyester drafting movie that marked a breakthrough within the creation of handdrawn prints. The uniquely textured floor and excessive degree of transparency allowed printmakers to make exquisitely effective washes and marks with an enormous vary of supplies and instruments. It may then be instantly transferred to silk screens with out an intermediate degree of images or laser scanning.
“Generations of display screen printers have been schooled to make all art work opaque,” wrote Kip. “Now ranges of transparency are the important thing in stencil making. In artistic phrases, which means that the method now has few, if any, limitations.”
The primary work made with True Grain was Frink’s Inexperienced Man sequence, and on the finish of his partnership with Curwen Studio, Kip made the primary of greater than 40 editions with Eduardo Paolozzi, who moved with him when he struck out on his personal to arrange the Gresham Studio at Duxford, south of Cambridge, in 1994.
Over the course of the following seven years, Kip’s collaborations expanded via 4 portfolios: for the quincentenary of Jesus School, Cambridge (1995); for the primary 10 years of the Freud Museum, north London (1996); for the Nationwide Museum of Ladies within the Arts, Washington (1998); and for King’s School, Cambridge (1999). Among the many many artists featured have been Peter Blake, Patrick Caulfield, Paula Rego and Claes Oldenburg.
After affected by auto-immune illness in 2001, Kip re-emerged the next yr with The Print Studio, Cambridge. The artists returned as nicely, with Alan Davie, Barry Flanagan and John McLean making a number of prints and editions with Kip till their deaths.
New collaborators included Stephen Chambers, Mali Morris and Nigel Corridor. Kip’s work with Chambers resulted in prints each monumental – The Massive Nation (2012) was made in 78 sections and measures 4 x 15 metres – and intensely intricate.
Kip’s studio pioneered using digital strategies to fuse Chambers’s drawings, seamlessly, with advanced overlapping patterns in a dizzying variety of layers and hues.
Born in London, Kip (Christopher) got here from a household of medics. Shortly after his delivery they moved to Cambridge, the place his mom, Gwen (nee Leigh), was a guide for youngster group care at Addenbrooke’s hospital, and his father, Austin Gresham, a professor of pathology at Cambridge College.
From the Leys faculty, in 1969 Kip went to Newcastle College to start a four-year effective artwork diploma. In 1970 the primary main exhibition dedicated to a grasp display screen printer, Chris Prater, opened on the Hayward Gallery in London, cementing the craft’s standing as a severe medium of inventive manufacturing. After a better diploma in artwork and printmaking at Manchester Polytechnic (now Manchester Metropolitan College) in 1974, Kip stayed within the metropolis to determine his first workshop.
Within the closing decade of his life, he remained the go-to printmaker for artists, galleries, and humanities establishments trying to discover printmaking, elevate funds, or diversify. He labored on a number of commissions for artists together with Hurvin Anderson, Tacita Dean, Nicola Hicks and Ai Weiwei.
Simply weeks earlier than he died, Kip was engaged on a sequence of monoprints with the American summary artist Willard Boepple, who had been coming to the studio since 2003. “Kip opened a complete world for me”, Boepple wrote, “build up varieties with layer upon layer of translucent colors.”
An entire archive of prints made by Kip since 2002 is held by the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and since 1998 by the Kassar Mochary Basis, Tucson, Arizona. He gave his account of his work within the e book Kip Gresham: The Artwork of Collaboration (2019).
Kip was firmly rooted in his native Cambridge group, belonging to the biking fraternity, concerned within the marketing campaign to save lots of his native pub, The Flying Pig, and taking an lively position in St Paul’s church. He was a loving husband, father and grandfather.
In 1973 he married Jane Ashby. She survives him, together with their sons Dan, Matt, Nick and Tim, and 5 grandchildren.
