Sheila Marbain Papers

Sheila Marbain was a master printer. She co-founded Maurel Studios, and printed the works of artists like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Marisol, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, and Helen Frankenthaler. Maurel Studios focused almost exclusively on silkscreen printing and Marbain was an innovator in the field, occasionally printing on non-traditional materials like vinyl and plexiglass.

Born in London in 1927 as Sheila Oline, she was daughter of Jewish Russian immigrants. Her family immigrated to America in 1939. Between 1948 and 1950 Sheila studied at Black Mountain College, a progressive art school where Josef Albers taught after the close of the Bauhaus. In the 1950s, she studied film cutting under the formerly WPA funded artist Leonard Pytlak in New York City. One of her first jobs was working at a commercial sign maker's silkscreen studio. At that time, silkscreen was still considered a commercial art technique. However, in the 1960s Pop Art would elevate the silkscreen to fine art.

During the 1950s, she married Ary Marbain and had a son named David. She and her husband began a print studio together in 1955, which met little success. They were unlucky in finding artists and galleries. Unfortunately, in 1963, Ary Marbain passed away. After the death of her husband, Marbain took classes at the Manhattan School of Printing and was determined to re-open Maurel Studios.

Ray Johnson, a fellow artist whom Marbain had known at Black Mountain College, suggested that she contact Multiples Gallery in order to locate artists. After a portfolio review, Marian Goodman, the director of Multiples, offered Marbain work creating a print for Oyvind Fahlstrom. She printed a three-dimensional set of dominoes on gessoed vinyl that were later mounted on Plexiglas with magnets attached to them. Work from Multiples Gallery steadily increased. Marbain was then at the center of the Pop Art Movement.

Silkscreen printing, made famous by Andy Warhol, was Marbain's choice because it was and is a flexible technique, allowing for improvisation and experimentation. The collaboration between the artist and the master printer was both intimate and professional. Marbain conducted research on the artists she worked with in order to provide them with suggestions and approaches that would either relate to their work, or push their work in a different way.

In 1990 Sheila Marbain had a retrospective entitled Sheila Marbain Master Printer at the Zimmerli Art Museum in conjunction with another exhibit Surface Printing in the 1980s : Lithographs, Screenprints, and Monotypes from the Rutgers Archives for Printmaking Studios. The catalog included an interview in which she discussed her passion for silkscreen.

Sheila Marbain passed away in 2008.