GORDON GILKEY : PRINTMAKER (SIGNED)

Portland, OR: Pacific Northwest College of Art, 1999. First Edition. Softcover. Very Good. Quarto, 10 in. x 9.5in., pp. 88. Inscribed and signed by the author on the front free endpaper. Pictorial front cover with white title to front and spine. Light rubbing to edges. Laid in: Two advertising mailers: one promoting Gilkeys exhibit in Portland; the other Gilkeys 2001 exhibit in Corvallis at Oregon State University. Also laid in: an additional two-sided prints by Gilkey. Illustrated catalog for the retrospective exhibit celebrating Gilkey's six decades of printmaking and photography - held at Portland's Pacific Northwest College of Art from November 4 through December 6, 1999.

Mr. Gilkey was born in Scio, Ore., in 1912 and became the first graduate to earn a fine arts degree in printmaking at the University of Oregon. He began collecting prints by trading his own work with other students. He expanded his knowledge of the medium after World War II, when he worked for the War Department in Europe, helping to locate and return artworks confiscated by the Nazis. In 1947 Mr. Gilkey joined the faculty of Oregon State University in Corvallis, retiring in 1978 as dean of the College of Liberal Arts. That year he became curator of prints and drawings at the Portland Art Museum and professor and printmaker in residence at the Museum Art School, now known as the Pacific Northwest College of Art, in Portland. The college organized a retrospective of his work in 1999. Over the years Mr. Gilkey amassed a large collection of prints spanning the period from the 15th century to the present, with particular emphasis on Mexican, French 19th-century and German Expressionist works. Starting in 1978, he donated more than 10,000 prints, and some drawings, to the museum, which established the Vivian and Gordon Gilkey Center for Graphic Arts in 1993. (from New York Times Obituaries).