Framed Letterpress Prints by Ewald Spieker

Over a career spanning more than 50 years, Ewald Spieker has made the letters of our alphabet the media for a unique body of art work.  In his native Netherlands, Spieker is renowned a the Letterheer (Gentleman of Letters or LetterLord depending on the translation).

These limited edition prints, produced in the late 70s and early 80s, come from a time during which Ewald was approaching the peak of his artistic powers, working from a light filled printing studio in central Amsterdam. 

Now, more than 40 years later, in an age in which the presence of the written word has been subsumed by its transient, constantly somewhere-else, digital ghost, the materiality of the prints take on a distinctive affective quality. Not just a nostalgia for the past but a cue to consider the material qualities of our own present.