For Immediate Release

         Edna Hibel Celebrates 40 Years of Lithography

                         With Her 600^th Original Stone Lithograph

            Edna Hibel, 87, the first American woman to receive the Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts, recently marked her 40^th year of creating original stone lithography by creating “The Epic,” her 600^th lithograph.

            “While other artists, such as Dali, have created more stone lithographs, no one has created as many multicolor lithographs as has Edna Hibel,” notes Andy Plotkin, CEO of Edna Hibel Studio, “so the creation of 600 lithographs is an unprecedented artistic milestone since the invention of stone lithography medium 210 years ago—a remarkable achievement, I believe.”

            Echoes Thomi Wolfensberger, Hibel’s chief lithographer in Switzerland, “Perhaps the most multiple color lithographs any other artist has created is 250.  Surely, when it comes to original stone lithography, there is no other artist who even comes close to Edna Hibel in quantity, quality, or complexity.”  For each color Edna Hibel wants to show in a lithograph, she has to create a separate drawing on a different Bavarian limestone, and then she has to know how all the different colors will look when they are printed one on top of the other.

            Recently, Vivian Altschuler of Prestige Gallery, who has been handling Edna Hibel’s fine art, collectibles, and gifts for more than 30 years in the Boston area, said “There is no doubt that Edna Hibel’s paintings are glorious, but because of her historic achievement in original stone lithography, I believe she will ultimately be most well known for her prodigious work in that artistic medium.”

            Plotkin notes, “Edna is not like most other artists in this medium, because she does not first create a sketch or a painting of the image before she works on the limestones.”  “Instead,” says Edna Hibel, “I dive right in and draw directly onto the stones.” 

            Edna Hibel was born in Boston in 1917, and has been painting and drawing for 77 years.  Her work has been exhibited in prestigious galleries and museums in more than 20 countries on four continents, including groundbreaking exhibitions in China, the former Soviet Union, and the former Yugoslavia.  Her medals of honor and other accolades include Pope John Paul II, the United Nations, the U.S. Congress, and B’nai Brith

International.  The Hibel Museum of Art in Jupiter, Florida, near West Palm Beach, is the world’s only non-profit, public museum dedicated to the art of a living American woman.

Additional information about stone lithography and Edna Hibel may

be obtained by contacting Edna Hibel Corp. at 1-800-275-3426 or by calling Prestige Gallery at (978) 535-5070.                    ###

Contact for additional information and photography, and to arrange for interviews of Edna Hibel:  Andy Plotkin, Edna Hibel Corp., (561) 848-9633; aplotkin@hibel.com

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