Leipzig BUGRA 1914 

was the largest World Fair on all things graphic ever held in the world: “Weltausstellung für Buchgewerbe und Grafik”.  

“Das Haus der Frau” was the name of the all-women pavilion, designed by Germany’s foremost woman architects to accommodate the exhibitions of graphic art created by women artists and organised and financed by a team of liberated and influential women. The accompanying catalogue is one of the most important beacons in the history of modern printmaking. The German artists were accompanied by their British and Scandinavian sisters. 

Printmaking: creating graphic impressions without the aid of an etching press (woodblock, linocut, lithography and monotype).

Modern printmaking: graphic prints created after the New World introduction of classic Japanese printing techniques in the 1880s and amalgamated with European methods from around 1900.

The Leipzig BUGRA exhibitions had to be abandoned and came to an untimely end because of the outbreak of WW-I.

Leipzig BUGRA revisited (1914-1939)

A forgotten exhibition organised in 1939 but cancelled before opening. 

Its rare surviving 1939 catalogue served as the ultimate guidebook to create this unique collection. Quietly assembling prints and archival material, found and purchased all over the world it was achieved to recreate almost completely the contents of the proposed 1939 exhibition. 

Many of the prints selected for the exhibition were found, retrieved, and when necessary, lovingly restored and conserved. Several prints however, that are known to have existed, are still “lost in time”. The immense destructions in most of Germany’s greater cities in the last months of WW-II by allied bombing and firestorms will have destroyed many (most?) the works on paper. Thanks to the our modern global network systems every day these lost treasures may wash-up on the shores of the auction- and sale rooms all over the world.

This website was created to build a monument honouring the artists involved in the actual exhibition “BUGRA revisited 1914-1939”. 

Several of the artists participating in 1914 were still alive in 1939 and had, between 1914 and 1939, created their best works. 

Read all about the BUGRA and the history of Modern printmaking in the Lexicon’s introduction and several accompanying chapters explaining the meaning and importance of this historic collection.