Art is simply what I do with my time on earth.
Charles Arnoldi
Known for his distinguished acumen for collaboration and innovative printmaking techniques, Garner Tullis is regarded as one of the most prolific printers of the 20th century. Born in Cincinnati in 1939, Tullis’s fascination with print- and papermaking began in earnest while a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania. His non-conformist approach to papermaking led to a Fulbright Scholarship in Florence, where he studied the art of bronze casting and came to understand the importance of creative teamwork.
Upon his return to the United States in 1965 for a Carnegie Fellowship at Stanford University, Tullis formed close friendships with Arnoldo Pomodoro, Mark Di Suvero, and Peter Volkus, which provided welcome encouragement in the exploration of printmaking while Tullis was simultaneously working to introduce younger artists to the practice. With that end in mind, he opened the International Institute of Experimental Printmaking in Santa Cruz in 1972 and was able to place emphasis on two areas in which he excelled: papermaking and the communication ideas and the transfer of knowledge.
Over the course of his career, Tullis would work with over 200 artists (some multiple times) including Richard Diebenkorn, Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Nolan, Dorothea Rockburne, Robert Ryman, Sean Scully, Emilio Vedova and Friedel Dzubas. The creation of monotype prints, his primary focus, appealed to both painters and sculptors and many times, the ideas born in Tullis’s atelier would go on to inform the practices of the artists once they had returned to their own studios. He continued to open a succession of workshops throughout California, New York, Philadelphia, and Italy while also holding teaching positions at Bennington College, California State College, Stanislaus, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Davis, and Harvard University. He was also the first recipient of the Ralph T. King Award for outstanding contributions to printmaking from the Print Club of Cleveland. Today, he is remembered for his groundbreaking printed works and the formative relationships that enabled their creation.
Out of this community comes a third thing, the art. If there weren't different people involved, there wouldn't be this magic.
Garner Tullis
Charles Arnoldi b. 1946
Dubbed “The Natural” by critic Dave Hickey, Charles Arnoldi established himself as a significant artist in the fertile Los Angeles art scene of the 1960s and 1970s. Arnoldi grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and moved to Los Angeles shortly after finishing high school. He took up studies at the Art Center School (now the Art Center College of Design) for two weeks, followed by Chouinard Art Institute – which he abandoned after eight months. Despite his departure from an institutional path, Arnoldi quickly achieved recognition and received the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Young Talent Award in 1969.
A visit to a burned-out Malibu orchard would prove fruitful for the young Arnoldi, who was struck by the geometry and texture of the trees’ branches. He gathered sticks to take back to his studio, where he would make the first of his so-called “stick paintings.” As Hickey put it, “Arnoldi’s sticks…bore with them no ‘homage to nature’ but rather homage to the fact that what nature aspires to and always fails to achieve—symmetry, right angles and straight lines…[His sticks] were carefully chosen, exquisitely nuanced, meticulously joined and deftly composed according the argument of the eye.”
Arnoldi’s first solo show was at Riko Mizuno’s Los Angeles gallery in 1971. He would continue to work with his “sticks” through the 1980s, when he ventured into layering sheets of wood and hacking into the surface with a chainsaw. Not limiting himself to a single medium or style, Arnoldi’s output remains connected through the study of abstract geometries – arcs, ellipses, grids, and lines – and bright color palettes. His works are held in institutional collections including the Chicago Art Institute, the Guggenheim Bilbao, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Auction Results Charles Arnoldi
