Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery looking at the output of Studio Prints, a leading printmaking workshop founded in 1968 and active until 2011. The workshop was run by Dorthea Wright and Marc Balakjian who had long term collaborations with many of the post war London artists include Lucien Freud, Frank Auerback and Leon Kossoff as well as maintaining artistic careers of their own. The show had some beautiful examples of the work they produced shown around a display of archive material. Who can resist this print of Freud's dog Pluto, but I think my favourite work was this lovely window by Wright herself. Closes 13 September 2026    

Fascinating exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum of etchings by Lucien Freud. The show marks a donation to the museum in lieu of inheritance tax from the estate of Marc Balakjian, the master printer who Freud worked with on etchings. Balakjian had kept a collection of trial proofs of their work. The commentary explained how they had worked closely together with Freud marking up the proofs with charges and the prints in the show these changes. There were multiple examples of each prints showing the subtle changes between each. I must admit a lot of the tweaks were too subtle for me to spot. In one case they were shown with the original etching plate. There were some beautiful images shown with examples of prints in the collection by artists whose prints were admired by Freud. I was particularly interested as in talks on Renaissance art I often hear about the relationship between artists and print makers so it was insightful to see an example of this relationship in a co...