Enfilade

Hendrick Goltzius, Study of a Right Hand, 1588
(Haarlem: Teylers Museum, N058)

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Recently opened at the AIC:

Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking

Art Institute of Chicago, 15 March — 1 June 2025
Getty Center, Los Angeles, 1 July — 14 September 2025

Curated by Jamie Gabbarelli and Edina Adam

The first exhibition ever to focus on the multiple connections between drawing and printmaking, this presentation brings together around 90 works on paper by some of the greatest artists in the Western tradition to uncover the inner workings of their creative process and offer new ways to think about the links between the two mediums.

Joseph Wright of Derby, Self-Portrait in a Fur Cap, 1765–68, monochrome pastel (grisaille) on blue-gray laid paper, 42.5 × 29.5 cm (Art Institute of Chicago, Clarence Buckingham Collection, 1990.141).

Featuring fascinating drawings and exceptional prints from the late 15th century though the mid-19th century by artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Parmigianino, Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens, Maria Sibylla Merian, Francisco Goya, and William Blake, the exhibition explores the creative exchange between the two practices by showcasing preparatory drawings for prints, printed imitations of drawings, and drawn copies of prints. A selection of hybrid works also questions traditional definitions, strict boundaries, and outdated hierarchical distinctions between media.

Among the many remarkable loans enriching the exhibition are two astonishing drawings of a right hand by Hendrick Goltzius, which will be shown alongside each other for the first time in over a generation. Additionally an impressive drawing by Rembrandt of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper makes its Chicago debut. With a wealth of exceptionally beautiful works, Lines of Connection offers fresh perspectives on two intertwined mediums and lifts the curtain on the rarely foregrounded subjects of artistic training, workshop practices, and the afterlife and collecting of works on paper.

Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking is co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the J. Paul Getty Museum. The exhibition is curated by Jamie Gabbarelli, Prince Trust Associate Curator, Prints and Drawings, Art Institute of Chicago, and Edina Adam, assistant curator of drawings, The J. Paul Getty Museum.

Jamie Gabbarelli and Edina Adam, Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking, 1400–1850 (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2025), 230 pages, ISBN 978-1606069653, $40.