If you live in San Francisco, you’ve probably heard of the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. You may even have read a poem or two from his collection, “The Coney Island of the Mind.” What’s less likely is that you’re familiar with his works on paper.
In addition to his work as a poet and bookstore owner, Ferlinghetti was a devoted painter, draftsperson, and printmaker who worked across a variety of media for over 60 years. A new exhibition at the Legion of Honor’s Logan Gallery surveys Ferlinghetti’s extensive work in printmaking. It opened July 19 and will remain on view through July 19, 2026.
“Ferlinghetti for San Francisco” contains a selection of Ferlinghetti’s etchings, lithographs, and letterpress prints selected by Natalia Lauricella, curator of prints and drawings at the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, along with other curators.
The show includes many of the 30-plus prints that Ferlinghetti’s estate gifted to the Achenbach after the artist’s death in 2021. The human figure is the center of many of the pieces on display, often directly in the sea or contained in a boat, perhaps inspired by Ferlinghetti’s time in the U.S. Navy. Most of the works are black and white. Text and image often mix and overlap. In form, these works range everywhere from a miniature sketchbook to large, glossy illustrated books.
Lauricella said that when she and the other curators selected works that highlighted Ferlinghetti’s wide range as a fine artist. “I chose the most diverse array that I possibly could,” she said.
The curators also selected works they felt spoke to Ferlinghetti’s collaborative spirit, as well as his interest in the lengthy process of printmaking itself.
Lauricella commented that printmaking is democratic in nature, since multiple people can possess the same print, or two museums display a print simultaneously. It is also a form that can demand collaboration between artist and printmaker. Lauricella thinks both aspects of printmaking appealed to Ferlinghetti.
For example, Ferlinghetti made one of the print series on display, a poem in three lithographs titled “Out of Chaos,” at Kala Art Institute in the Bay Area, with the help of Wendyn Cadden. Before Ferlinghetti could draw his print on the stone, Cadden would have prepared the stone along with the various chemicals used in the printmaking process.
“Ferlinghetti was at that point a very established artist, and I feel like he would have been really open to that kind of collaboration,” said Lauricella.
Other works also emphasize Ferlinghetti’s commitment to collaboration and community. In one illustrated book, Ferlinghetti’s poems are positioned opposite Bay Area artist Stephanie Peek’s work. And there are lithographs created as a collaboration between Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara, two of Ferlinghetti’s contemporaries.
For more Ferlinghetti: The Beat Museum
If you want to learn more about Ferlinghetti after visiting the exhibition, The Beat Museum is the logical next stop. Ferlinghetti did not consider himself a Beat poet, but he was instrumental in establishing the movement in San Francisco, and much of the museum’s collection is devoted to Ferlinghetti.
Exhibits include the door to Ferlinghetti’s longtime painting studio, which a friend of his stole from the subsequent tenant. There are several issues of the magazine “City Lights,” a precursor to the City Lights Bookstore that Ferlinghetti would later help open, with poems by Ferlinghetti. There is a case devoted to Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl,” which was first put into print by the publishing arm of City Lights Bookstore and whose discussion of homosexuality and drug use led to the obscenity trial largely responsible for the Beat Poets’ notoriety.
The exhibits suggest the wide-ranging influence Ferlinghetti exerted over the city. “He had all these little tendrils into the things he cared about,” said Brandon Loberg, the museum’s art director.
Loberg remembers seeing Ferlinghetti speak at a community poetry reading before the pandemic, held in the museum’s upstairs.
Next Stop: City Lights
Around the corner from The Beat Museum is the City Lights bookstore, the perfect place to finish an unofficial Ferlinghetti tour of the city.
The bookstore began in 1953 when Ferlinghetti ran into Peter D. Martin, who had published a couple of his poems, on Columbus Avenue. Martin was looking to open a bookstore, Ferlinghetti chipped in $500, and City Lights was born.
In addition to “Howl,” City Lights published Frank O’Hara’s “Lunch Poems” and many other notable works of the Beat Generation.
Since Ferlinghetti’s death, City Lights has stayed true to itself. Its chief book seller, Paul Yamazaki, still occupies the post he stepped into in 1982. Ferlinghetti’s presence is evident in many of the photographs that line the walls and his hand-painted signs with decrees like “STASH YOUR SELL-PHONE AND BE HERE NOW,” and “ABANDON ALL DESPAIR YE WHO ENTER HERE.”
