Bernhard Baer, print director, and the Ganymed Press: papers

Correspondence with artists, co-publishers, galleries and printers (1947 - 1985); prospectuses (1947 - 1985); lithographs (ca.1950 - 1980); proofs (ca.1950 - 1983); artists' graphic work in signed, limited editions (1950 - 1978); exhibition catalogues, reviews and other publications about the artists (1950 - 1980); photographs (undated); posters (undated); trial blocks (undated); type examples (undated). Principal artists featured: Barbara Hepworth; Ivon Hitchens; Oskar Kokoschka (projects included Apulia, Hellas, Jerusalem faces, King Lear, Odyssey, Saul and David, The seafarer and Women of Troy); L.S. Lowry; Rory McEwan; Henry Moore (projects included the reclining figure, Sketchbook 1926, Sketchbook 1928, Sketchbook 1980, Stonehenge suite and The wind relief ); Robert Motherwell; Ben Nicholson (projects included Architectural suite, Ben Nicholson 3, Greek and Turkish forms); Sidney Nolan; John Piper; Ceri Richards; Graham Sutherland (projects included Bees, Bestiary, Le bestiaire and Sketchbook); Rabindranath Tagore; Brett Whiteley.

Bernhard Baer (1905 - 1983) was born in Berlin. He practised as a lawyer until 1933 when he was prevented, as a Jew, from continuing in his profession. However, he was able to find work with a firm of gravure printers and in 1938 he obtained work in London. In 1950 he became the print director at the new collotype printing firm Ganymed Press which was founded by Lund Humphries and the New Statesman. On Bernhard Baer's initiative an associate firm, Ganymed Original Editions Ltd, was founded in 1960. It published, occasionally in partnership with Marlborough Fine Art Ltd, artists' graphic work in signed limited editions. Following the closure of the Ganymed printing firm at Yeading in 1963 Bernhard Baer carried on working from the Ganymed offices and gallery/shop that had been established in Great Turnstile, near Holborn, London in 1949, until they too were closed in 1980. Bernard Baer's wife, Ann Baer (nee Sidgwick), was in charge of the Ganymed Gallery from 1949 to 1980 and was very closely involved in her husband's work.

This archive collection is available for consultation in the V&A Study Rooms by appointment only. Full details of access arrangements may be found here: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/archives/.

Access to some of the material may be restricted. These restrictions are noted in the catalogue where relevant.

Given by Ann Baer, 1985.

Cataloguing supported by the American Friends of the V&A through the generosity of The David Berg Foundation, New York.

Full list at AAD and NAL.

Information on copying and commercial reproduction may be found here: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/archives/.