This Winter, the Rahr-West Art Museum is pleased to present Berel Lutsky Retrospective: A Life in Print, a celebration of a lifetime of art creation by printmaker Berel Lutsky. This exhibit will feature prints, drawings, pastels, photographs and more spanning several decades of work. Lutsky has been exhibited locally, regionally, and nationally and is in public and private collections in Israel, Belgium, Japan, and the United States. Lutsky is perhaps best know locally as a long-time art professor at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Manitowoc, where he built an impressive print studio, taught art history courses, ran the gallery, curated community shows and co-founded Really Big Prints!
Lutsky has worked with several recurring themes since the 1970s, including bridges, collections, altars, landscape, and, more recently, crows. The works featuring crows began during a 2020-21 ARTservancy residency at the Kratzsch Nature Conservancy. His interest was piqued by learning that the crow world was dealing with it’s own pandemic: the West Nile Virus, which has reduced the world’s crow population by at least 40%. He says, “as I learned more about crows they became a muse of sorts for me – they lead complicated lives in a hierarchical social situation, communicate, mourn, use tools, act as a group…”
Lutsky is one of the founders of Really Big Prints!, a biennial celebration of large-scale printmaking in Manitowoc County in which a steamroller is used as the printing press. Lutsky first saw steamrollers used like this at a printmaking conference in Philadelphia and wanted to bring an event like that to Manitowoc, with an emphasis on quality printmaking and creating a community of printmakers. This event was historically held at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Manitowoc campus but moved to Two River’s Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum in 2023.
The Berel Lutsky Retrospective: A Life in Print, will be on exhibit at the Museum from December 3, 2023 through February 18, 2024.