International prints, drawings and illustrated books
The Kenneth Tyler Archive Collection

David Hockney The master printer of Los Angeles 1973 colour lithograph and screenprint more detail

The Kenneth Tyler Archive Collection consists of over 7000 editioned prints, screens, paperworks, illustrated books and multiples, along with rare or unique proofs and drawings held at the National Gallery of Australia. It also includes documentation of approximately 60 hours of film and sound as well as some 60,000 photographs. Over time this site will grow, as further information is added. It is the Gallery’s intention to provide the public with information regarding the collection as we proceed with our research and documentation.

As a printmaker and publisher I can only be as successful as the artists I work with and the art we create together...
Kenneth Tyler in 1995.¹

Kenneth Tyler was speaking of working with the artist David Hockney, but his comments are applicable to that group of talented artists who were put into the creative environment of the various Tyler print workshops from the 1960s to 2001, working with Tyler and his team. For Tyler, collaboration engaged heart and mind, introducing innovation, response, reaction — all necessary for creativity. The printer had to be a chameleon, changing his colour to suit the artist and what the artist might need. It also required a degree of selflessness by the printer and workshop staff, where the artist had to come first. In an observation about Tyler’s role the artist Frank Stella noted that:

He is more driven than the artists he works with, he won’t go home before you do, he’s always there – and in the end he’s always there for you.²

This website is devoted to the work of artists who collaborated with Kenneth Tyler at Gemini Ltd (1965) and Gemini GEL (1966-1973) in Los Angeles, California, Tyler Workshop Ltd (1974) and Tyler Graphics Ltd (1975) at Bedford and Mount Kisco (1987), New York.

Jane Kinsman
Senior Curator of International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books

¹Ken Tyler ‘Layers of space and time: Hockney’s Moving Focus’ in Contemporary Master Prints from the Lilja Collection (Vaduz, Liechtenstein: The Lilja Art Fund Foundation in association with Azimuth Editions 1995) p.125.
² Frank Stella, introduction to Kenneth Tyler’s Qantas Lecture, National Gallery of Australia 13 October 1999.