POEM PICS

Conceived in 1951 by Peter Grippe, director of renowned graphic-arts workshop Atelier 17, 21 Etchings and Poems was published in 1960, an era of collaborative ferment between artists and writers. (Painter Alfred Leslie’s multi-contributor compendium of art and text, The Hasty Papers, was also released that year.) A painter and sculptor as well as a printmaker, Grippe etched an intense graphic replete with mushroom cloud for Dylan Thomas’s “The hand that signed the paper felled a city,” while Franz Kline’s slashing abstraction starkly complements Frank O’Hara’s succinctly titled “Poem.” This exhibition includes all 21 etchings, and though Ben Nicholson’s image for Sir Herbert Read’s “Tenement” was printed sideways, the lithe cubist line work overpowers the publisher’s mistake.

Sat., March 3, 6:30 p.m.; Tuesdays-Saturdays, 11 a.m. Starts: March 3. Continues through April 29, 2012