20^th Anniversary Jubilee Edition 
The MTG Krakow 2012 motto: Idea - Process - Message 

exhibition opening: 14^th September, 6.00 PM 
running from 15^th September to 31^st October 
Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery 
pl. Szczepański 3a, Krakow 



      The Krakow International Print Triennial is open to whatever is of most value and whatever is the most creative in the printmaking world, a world for which Krakow will become the centre for the twentieth time. From 1966, when the first International print Biennial was held in the city, right up to the present day, the event’s unique, democratic formula has engendered both the promotion of printmaking and the presentation of the most fascinating phenomena manifest in that world. Selected works receive their world premiere at the Krakow Triennial. It is most certainly worth being here and seeing how printmaking, with no holds barred in its artistic aspirations, rooted in the classic methods of creating images, is reaching dynamically for the future. How it has taken possession of new technologies. How it conducts experiments in the seclusion of the studio. And how new talents and artistic personalities are emerging. 

      Idea – Process – Message, the motto of this year’s event, serves to trigger reflection on the place and role of printmaking within the realities of the contemporary world. Graphic art is bound up in current intellectual, artistic and social trends. It is a reactive art, being, as it is, a phase of the incessant process of generating essential messages about today’s world and about us ourselves. Graphic art is active. Graphic art is vital. 

      Under the auspices of the International Print Network (IPNet), a programme unique in its international scale, the Krakow International Print Triennial Society works in collaboration with the Horst-Janssen Museum in Oldenburg and the Vienna Künstlerhaus, as well as with two associate partners, the Dalarnas Museum in Falun and Mimar University in Istanbul. MTG ‘PrintArt’ Kraków-Katowice has been the event’s Polish partner for a number of editions now. 

      The main exhibition of MTG Krakow 2012, which will go on display at the Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art  in September, launches a cycle of extensive international exhibitions which will be seen in Poland, Germany, Austria, Sweden and Turkey. It will bring together around three hundred works from the several thousand submitted by artists from numerous countries which are a force in graphic art, such as Japan, the USA, Canada, Korea and Great Britain, as well as from smaller centres of print; New Zealand, Kyrgyzstan, Puerto Rico, Nepal and Iraq. The selection of works for the Triennial exhibition in Krakow, Vienna, Oldenburg, Falun, Istanbul and Katowice lies in the hands of an independent, international jury, as does the awarding of the prizes. New and surprising contexts have given rise to monumental, classical prints, installations and graphic objects, works situated at the intersection between the visual arts disciplines and multimedia graphic art. Something of interest to artists and public the world over is the expression of the meaning of graphic art in contemporary culture. 

      The exhibitions of most moment in the MTG Krakow programme are the International Print Triennial – Krakow 2012 at the Bunkier Sztuki Gallery, the Grand Prix of Young Polish Print at pl. Szczepański; Witold Skulicz. Graphic Art Above All… and Joanna Piech. Prints, Grand Prix of MTG – Krakow 2009, at Krakow’s International Cultural Centre; Graphic Art and Education, an exhibition of works from Poland’s arts schools, at the Palace of Arts, Contemporary Japanese Woodcuts at Pryzmat Gallery and Lettra – Kraków 2012 / sign and letter at the Jagellonian Library.