Pace Prints Acquires Brand X Editions

Pace Prints has acquired Brand X Editions, the nearly 50-year-old New York printmaking studio and publisher known for its work with artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, Helen Frankenthaler, Jeff Koons, Glenn Ligon, and Mickalene Thomas.

The acquisition brings Brand X under the leadership of Pace Prints president and CEO Jacob Lewis, who took ownership of Pace Prints from its founder, Richard Solomon, and his partners last year. Both companies will continue to operate their existing workshops, while Brand X will add to Pace Prints’ production capabilities in Manhattan and Brooklyn as well as a forthcoming gallery and printmaking facility in Los Angeles.

The deal formalizes a relationship that goes back decades. Brand X founder Robert Blanton, who established the studio in 1979 after beginning his career at Styria Studio, has for years worked with Solomon and Pace Prints. In a statement, Blanton said Pace Prints had been “foundational” to Brand X and called Lewis ideally positioned to lead the two companies.

Brand X built its reputation on ambitious screenprinting. David DeSanctis, who joined Blanton as a partner, established its publishing program in 2011, producing editions with artists including Alex Katz, Rashid Johnson, KAWS, Adam Pendleton, Loie Hollowell, Joel Mesler, and Tschabalala Self.

The studio’s history has recently gotten the museum treatment, too. In 2024, Blanton and DeSanctis established the Brand X Archive at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, comprising more than 400 prints made at the studio. The museum mounted a retrospective of Brand X the following year, while another exhibition devoted to its screenprinting is currently on view at the Dallas Museum of Art.

For Lewis, the acquisition is another step in an unusually busy period of expansion. A former Pace Prints intern who became president in 2019, Lewis took over ownership of the company in 2025. Pace Prints is also preparing to open its Los Angeles facility this fall.

“As we embark on our mission to preserve and challenge the technical possibilities of printmaking, Pace Prints is thrilled to now welcome our long-time partner Brand X under our creative umbrella,” Lewis told ARTnews in an email

He said the Brand X acquisition and Los Angeles expansion were both part of a larger attempt to push what can be done with the medium. “Given the collaborative nature of our studios, ideas are exchanged, an artist’s vision is realized, and the editioned work that is created becomes something that couldn’t have been crafted in isolation,” Lewis said.

The acquisition also puts Lewis in the somewhat unusual position of carrying on the businesses of two veteran New York printmakers who helped shape his career.

“I’ve been fortunate to have had not only one, but two mentors,” Lewis said in the announcement, referring to Solomon and Blanton. “It is an honor that each of them has entrusted me with their businesses, which carry such important artistic legacies.”

If all goes according to plan, Lewis sees the combined operation becoming something larger than a pair of print shops. Over the next decade, he said, Pace Prints’ bi-coastal studios could become places “to share and explore ideas in dialogue with artists and collectors for generations to come.”