TitleCosta Brava
Artist
Clinton Adams
(American, 1918 - 2002)
Date1988
MediumColor lithograph on off-white German Etching paper
DimensionsSheet size: 19 3/4 × 30 1/4 in.
Image size: 17 3/8 × 27 5/8 in.
Mat size: 25 1/8 × 37 1/8 in.
SignedSigned in graphite at LR: "Clinton Adams '88".
MarkingsTamarind blindstamp at BLC; printer's blindstamp at BRC.
SubmissionANA diploma presentation, September 11, 1991
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1991.61
Label TextBorn in Glendale, California, Clinton Adams was a prolific painter and printmaker for more than fifty years and in 1960 served as the inaugural associate director of the Tamarind Lithography Workshop. Adams initially studied at Glendale Junior College before enrolling in the art department at the University of California, Los Angeles during the 1930s. Adams served within an Engineer Camouflage Battalion during World War II and was stationed for a time at Mitchel Air Force Base, Long Island. In his spare time he would make regular trips into New York City where he saw the work of Stuart Davis and the Precisionists. These encounters had an immediate and lasting effect on his paintings and would soon be influential on his prints as well. In 1950, Adams met Lynton Kistler, who introduced him to the technique of lithography, and by 1960 he was hired to oversee operations at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop. After accepting a teaching position at the University of New Mexico the following year, Adams brought the Tamarind Workshop there permanently in 1970. He would go on to oversee the (renamed) Tamarind Institute until his retirement and co-authored The Tamarind Book of Lithography: Art & Techniques with Tamarind's first master printer and technical director, Garo Antreasian, NA.
When Adams began producing lithographs in the late 1940s, they were semi-abstract prints that were primarily cubist-inspired. By 1960 he developed a technique of applying a tusche wash to the lithography stone. This allowed him to combine elements of Abstract Expressionism with more geometric forms. By the end of the 1960s, Adams was working entirely with simplified geometric shapes that echoed the primary forms of Minimalism. "Costa Brava" employs a combination of hard edge geometric shapes with the gesturally-inclined forms of torn paper. This lithograph was one of many that resulted from a trip that Adams took following his retirement in 1985 when he journeyed to the Greek Islands, Spain, and Southern France.
