Discipline: Visual Art

Robert Broner

Discipline: Visual Art
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1983
More: www.robertbroner.com
Robert Broner is an American printmaker, artist, and educator. After studying with S.W. Hayter at the experimental print workshop Atelier 17, Broner continued to use a wide range of innovative techniques during his years as a printmaker. Besides using the traditional techniques of engraving, etching, aquatint, lithography, photolithography, silkscreen, and woodcut, he developed several new techniques. In the 1950's he invented the texture imprint, an intaglio process created by cutting and inking fabrics that are then collaged on a metal plate and printed as a monotype. This innovation led Broner to use other found objects in his printmaking. In the late sixties and early seventies he printed directly from electrical circuit boards, using them like intaglio plates. Broner also cast paper pulp in the image of electrical circuits, and vacuum-formed them. He later began using three-dimensional found objects, such as crushed tin cans, inking, and collaging the objects to create printed landscapes. The technique of metal collage prints was initiated by the experimental printmaking of German Expressionist Rolf Nesch. Broner also made early use of the photocopying process to create mail-art images. His most recent experiments have been with woodcuts. Broner collages multiple pieces of wood into a single surface on which he then cuts his image. The individual pieces of wood are inked separately before being printed as a single large print. He calls this relief printing process “collage woodcut.”

Studios

Putnam

Robert Broner worked in the Putnam studio.

The Graphics Studio (as it was originally named) was converted to its present use in 1972–1974 through a grant from the Putnam Foundation, and originally served the property as both a power house and pump house. Well water was pumped from a large cistern to Hillcrest, the Foreman’s Cottage, and the lower buildings closer to…

Learn more