A leading typographer and printmaker, as well as a living legend whose name resounds worldwide, Alan Kitching’s career started at a time when letterpress printing played the leading role in commercial printing. For over seventy years, since he was initiated into the world of letterpress as an apprentice compositor at the age of fifteen in the 1950s, Kitching has pursued letterpress printing along with the ups and downs of the industry.

His beautiful typesetting has been backed by his unquestionable knowledge and skill as a printer. He did not shirk from typographical experimentation with the “Broadside” (broadsheets) printed and published during the 1980s and the 1990s, when letterpress printing no longer played a central role in the transmission of information. He explored the artistic potential of letterpress printing. His originality also bloomed freely with the typographic maps (maps made up solely of text) that he created in later years. Alan Kitching followed his own path, without being swayed by the trends and circumstances surrounding printing. He can only be described as a treasure, without peer, whose work is immediately identifiable at first glance.

This is the first full-scale exhibition of Alan Kitching’s work to be presented in Japan, covering everything from his early works to his latest projects. The walls at kyoto ddd gallery will be simply covered with all sorts of gems, from Kitching’s major works to rare creations that have laid slumbering in archives, as well as new works printed expressly for this exhibition. Visitors will be thrilled and moved by how Kitching devoted his life to letterpress printing, and by how his body of work embodies the immutable power of typography that serves as both a form of communication and a work of art.