David Driesbach

This is a retrospective catalog of the work of the distinguished American artist, primarily printmaker, David Driesbach, organized by Northern Illinois University's Art Museum on the occasion of his retirement from NIU's School of Art in the 1990s. Because of his national stature as a printmaker, Driesbach was one of the first faculty members at NIU to be named a Presidential Research Professor by that institution.

The main catalog essay is by Jerry D. Meyer, an art historian and faculty member in the School of Art at the time of the exhibition. It is based primarily on a series of interviews with Driesbach during which the artist's work, beginning in the late 1940s, early 1950s and extending into the 1990s, is discussed relative to its iconography and meaning, especially as it evolved after he graduated from the University of Iowa with an MFA in the late 1940s. Driesbach's work is dominated by narrative, with a figure-style almost cartoonish in character, in which a kind of stream of consciousness activity surfaces as he formulates his primarily unplanned compositions. His work was strongly influenced by Surrealism and the fantasy style of Chagall, the German Expressionists, and, early-on the prints of Picasso, among others. Driesbach works in a variety of printmaking techniques including various intaglio processes as well as lithography.

Jerry D. Meyer, author of the essay