Typographic Jazz: The Monoprints of Jack Stauffacher — Exhibition Admission

Letterform Archive has a long and close relationship with the work of Jack Stauffacher. We hold a significant run of his Greenwood Press books; we published a book on his wood type prints; and we are the home of his studio archive. This last collection — rich in private experiments — sparked the idea for an exhibition of the artist’s work that has yet to be shown in public. Curated by Rob Saunders, the show explores Stauffacher’s playful and improvisational typography and features more than 100 prints, sketches, iterative proofs, and other explorations of his creative process.

Using a mismatched set of 19th-century wood block letters, Stauffacher reimagined type as abstract form. His experiments in inking and layering led to an extraordinary body of unique monoprints, each one-of-a-kind. Through unfinished work, viewers get to peek into Stauffacher’s mind and observe his use of abstraction, color, form, rotation, overprinting, ink manipulation, and transparency.