George Nama

George Allen Nama, born in 1939 in Homestead, Pennsylvania, was an American printmaker, sculptor, draftsman, and educator. He studied at Carnegie Mellon University, earning both undergraduate and graduate degrees, before working during the 1960s at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17 in Paris, where he became part of an international artistic community centered around experimental printmaking. Nama taught draftsmanship and printmaking at the National Academy of Design in New York. In 1981, artists at the institution elected him to the National Academy in recognition of his artistic achievements.

Nama developed a body of work centered on invented forms that moved between figuration and abstraction, often drawing from the body, natural forms, archaeology, architecture, music, and literature. He described all of his images as figurative, explaining that even if the forms did not exist in reality, they “might exist.” Working through drawing and redrawing, he allowed forms to evolve without fixed plans or narratives. His early works depicted industrial cityscapes, interiors, trees, and landscapes before gradually shifting toward more abstract and organic imagery. During the late 1960s, Nama began creating works from his Computer Landscape series, which incorporated screenprint, soft ground etching, aquatint, and other printmaking techniques at a time when artists were increasingly exploring the creative possibilities of computers. Beginning in 1976, he worked with French poet and art historian Yves Bonnefoy on a series of artist books, later creating collaborative projects with Alfred Brendel, Charles Simic, and filmmaker George A. Romero. These projects brought Nama’s etchings and drawings into conversation with poetry, literature, music, and film, expanding his interest in imagery, rhythm, and narrative.

His first solo exhibition took place at the Carnegie Institute Museum of Art in 1963, beginning a career that brought his work to galleries, museums, and international art fairs in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Brussels, and Munich. His prints, drawings, sculptures, and artist books are held in the collections of institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Morgan Library & Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Nama lived and worked in Montauk, New York until his passing in 2025.