June Wayne (1918–2011) was a pioneering American printmaker, painter, tapestry innovator, and activist whose self-taught brilliance reshaped modern lithography and championed women in the arts. Born June Claire Kline on March 7, 1918, in Chicago to single mother Dorothy Kline—a fiercely independent Russian Jewish immigrant who fled pogroms—Wayne dropped out of high school at 15 to pursue art. Her first solo exhibition came at age 17 in 1935 at Chicago's Boulevard Bookshop, followed by a showing at Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes in 1936. Primarily self-taught as a painter, she honed technical skills through WPA projects and wartime industrial design courses at Caltech, then dove into lithography in 1948 under Lynton Kistler's Los Angeles studio, later collaborating with master printer Marcel Durassier in Paris in 1957.
In 1960, Wayne founded the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Hollywood with Ford Foundation backing, directing it until 1970 when it became the Tamarind Institute at the University of New Mexico. This nonprofit revitalized fine-art lithography in America by fostering artist-printer collaborations, hosting over 150 creators like Josef Albers, Louise Nevelson, and Ed Ruscha, and emphasizing small editions on premium papers. Her own Tamarind prints, such as the 1961 lithograph *Tenth Memory*—mastering tusche wash for swirling reticulations—and the milestone *At Last a Thousand* (1965), explored surveillance, identity, and cosmic forces. Earlier, her 1958 artist's book *Songs and Sonets*, illustrating John Donne's poetry, marked a Parisian tradition breakthrough for an American woman. Themes of science—DNA helices, tidal waves, quantum physics—and personal history, like the *Dorothy Series* honoring her mother, defined her monochromatic, poetic style.
Later, Wayne innovated tapestries at France's Gobelins manufactory (1971–1974), overseeing weaving for works like *Grand Vague Bleu* and *La Journée des Lemmings*, then returned to textured paintings: the *Cognitos/Djuna Set* (1984), *Quake Series* (1992–1995) evoking seismic chaos with styrene modules, and the monumental *Propellar* (ongoing to 2011). A feminist trailblazer, she launched "Joan of Art" seminars in 1972 to train women on contracts and galleries, commissioned a landmark 1972 study exposing gender bias in reviews, and co-founded the Los Angeles Council of Women in the Arts.
Wayne's legacy endures through Tamarind's global influence on printmaking, her advocacy elevating women artists, and holdings in institutions like MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, and LACMA—over 3,300 prints donated to Rutgers. Dying at 93 in her Hollywood studio, she left a cosmos of innovation bridging art, science, and equity.
