In 1964 after moving to New York from his native Uruguay, Camnitzer co-founded The New York Graphic Workshop with fellow artists Argentine Liliana Porter and Venezuelan Guillermo Castillo (1941–1999). Until 1970, they examined the conceptual meaning behind printmaking, and sought to test and expand the definition of the medium. In 1964, Camnitzer wrote a manifesto on printmaking that was later adopted by the group as a statement of intent. In this text, Camnitzer argues that printmaking should not restrict but amplify the artist’s possibilities of generating conceptually rich ideas through strong images. This concept would dominate Camnitzer’s artistic practice through the later part of the 1960s and well into the 1970s. During this time, Camnitzer developed a body of work that explored language as a primary medium. He found that “the verbal description of a visual situation could elicit the creativity of the spectator in a better way than the visual situation itself.” In Untitled, Camnitzer portrays a sunset through text, as the stenciled word “sun” descends from left to right until a horizontal line, representing the horizon, stops the letters short. A landscape through language, the etching also reveals how viewers read both images and text. Read from left to right, as most Western viewers approach the written word, the work denotes a sunset. Yet, read from left to right, the image conveys a sunrise.

Exhibitions

2011: "Words Such as Painting and Sculpture," Annex14, Bern, Switzerland

Publications

Adams, Beverly, Luis Camnitzer, Peter Osborne, and Octavio Zaya. Luis Camnitzer. Hospice of Failed Utopias. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 2018, p. 53.