Remembering Renowned Lithographer and Printmaking Alum Andrew Vlady
On October 27, 2023, Tyler Printmaking alum Andrew Vlady (BFA ’67 MFA ’70) passed away in Mexico City, the place he worked and called his home for many decades. Along with his wife, Beatriz, he was the co-founder and technical director of the lithographic studio Kyron Ediciones Gráficas Limitadas.
Vlady received his BFA in Printmaking from Tyler in 1967, then traveled to the then Tyler School of Art Rome Campus, today Temple Rome, to be a teaching assistant in the Printmaking program there. He stayed in Rome to embark on his MFA, which he completed in 1970, gaining a particular interest in lithography, one of the oldest forms of printmaking.
During his time in Rome as a TA, Vlady was commissioned to assist with setting up lithographic equipment in the printmaking studio. He located litho stones from Bavaria, Germany that he had delivered to Milan, Italy, and a press in Bologna, Italy, and made separate trips to pick them up—though not without a slight hiccup, as his daughter, Natasha Vlady, recalls.
“[My dad once] told me that he and the caretaker at the time drove off with Temple Rome’s campus van to pick up the materials,” she said. “When they returned with the litho press, it wouldn't fit through the doors, so they had to cut the corners off the legs in order to make it fit around the sharp turns to get to the studio.”
Natasha Vlady, presently the executive assistant to the dean at Temple Rome, says that while the press itself has been in storage on the premises for the past few years, the stones that her father originally acquired are still in the printmaking studio to this day.
His legacy goes beyond the lasting impact still felt at Temple Rome’s campus and community. In his early days of printmaking, Vlady joined the prestigious Gemini Limited Editions Workshop in Los Angeles, working alongside renowned printmaker Kenneth E. Tyler and collaborating with prominent artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and Claes Oldenburg.
The vast amount of work that he and his wife facilitated at Kyron Ediciones Gráficas Limitadas over the course of 32 years propelled them to significant prominence in the world of printmaking and lithography in Mexico, Latin America and around the world. They worked with many well-known artists of the 20th century, including Luis Garcia Guerrero, Leonora Carrington, Francisco Zuñiga, Rufino Tamayo, and Francisco Toledo. After the studio’s closing in 2004, the pair dedicated their time to disseminating the workshop’s archive and collection that includes over 300 prints, resulting in exhibitions in Rome, Italy in 2010 and Athens, Greece in 2011.
In addition to his impressive professional career, Vlady spent time as a lithography instructor, published several essays on the art of printmaking, gave talks and demonstrations in both English and Spanish on lithography and Mexican art, and served as editor for numerous catalogs. He received the Domecq Medal from the Instituto Cultural Domecq in 1998.
The reverberations of Vlady’s widespread legacy will continue to be felt, from the Temple communities at Tyler and in Rome, to the printmaking communities around the globe, particularly in Mexico and the United States.