Hyde Bridge

Friendship, geography and shared artistic ambition were the factors that in 1960 brought Anne Yeats, together with four highly talented colleagues, to found Graphic Studio Dublin as Ireland’s first cooperative print studio. Over the sixty years of its subsequent history, the Studio developed into one of Europe’s leading artist-driven organisations. The other members of the original group were artists Elizabeth Rivers, Patrick Hickey and Leslie MacWeeney, with the Dolmen Press publisher, Liam Miller. Upper Mount Street in central Dublin was the locus where most of them either lived or worked and where they began their enterprise in a dank Georgian basement. Between that primitive beginning and the current permanent Studio in a Victorian distillery warehouse north of the Liffey, stretched the years of struggle to confirm fine-art printmaking as a central element among the contemporary visual arts.

With an artist-led ethos since its inception, Graphic Studio Dublin has protected the traditional skills of etching, stone lithography, wood and lino-cutting and now embraces contemporary techniques of photo-intaglio and screenprinting. Current membership of the studio numbers over 80 Artist/Printmakers. In addition, a Visiting Artist programme invites established artists in other media to make prints, working with a Master Printer. Printmaking is taught as part of an annual education programme. Graphic Studio Gallery was founded in 1988 as an outlet to sell original fine-art prints.

As part of the 60 years celebrations, Graphic Studio Dublin are delighted to present the work of its current membership in The Hyde Bridge Gallery, based in the Yeats Building, Sligo. We are also very pleased to show the work of Anne Yeats which is held in our extensive archive and to include a new text about her involvement in the foundation of Graphic Studio Dublin written by Brian Lalor.