Sidney B. Felsen, a beloved co-founder of the groundbreaking Gemini G.E.L. printmaking workshop in Los Angeles, passed away on Sunday, June 9, at his Los Angeles home due to renal failure. He was 99.
Felsen and the late Stanley Grinstein, USC fraternity brothers, founded Gemini G.E.L. in the mid-1960s as a humble place for regional artists to interact, share ideas, and collaborate. Their efforts helped ignite a national printmaking renaissance.
In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, Felsen's family shared that Richard Serra once said that Felsen prefers to hurry slowly, and they think that captured him perfectly.
Serra claimed that printmaking is a cult performed by practitioners who suffer from occasional anxiety, who demand guidance, support, and patient collaboration, who need a witness to watch the process from the start, a witness who understands how the mark can be transformed and reproduced to evoke the printed image.
"It is impossible to accomplish this transformation without a guide, an overseer, a producer. Sidney Felsen is all of that. ... I prefer to think of Sidney as a muse rather than a producer; the assimilation of his aura a stimulant to the process ... [and] taking photographs is Sidney's way of watching over us, not watching us," he added.
Gemini, known for its openness to embrace creativity, attracted artists from both coasts, who often gathered for art openings or raucous, all-night parties at the Grinstein home. In addition to fostering relationships amongst artists, the sense of community shaped an otherwise amorphous and widely dispersed emerging LA in the 1960s and 1970s art scene.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosted a survey exhibition of Gemini's 1966-2014 works, arranged by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., when Gemini turned 50, and Felsen was 92.
"The Serial Impulse at Gemini G.E.L." showcased the uncommon collaboration between artists and printers at Gemini, as well as Felsen and Grinstein's concept of boundary-pushing experimentation in the printmaking field.
However, Felsen said that at first, he had no idea that his little print workshop would become so significant.
In 2016, Felsen told The Times that hanging around the artists and maybe building up a collection would be a hobby and fun.
