Worcester Museum Shows Printmaking Methods

The oldest and simplest methods of making a precisely repeatable image depends upon carving a printing surface, applying a film of ink, and stamping the pigment onto paper or fabric. With the development of the printing press in the fourteenth century, woodcut became the most common method of mass producing pictures in the West. In Japan, the process developed independently as a method for creating stylish color images of actors and landscapes. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, finer detail and block longevity were accomplished by wood engraving.

Metal engraving tools were used to carve images in the end grain blocks of very hard wood, in a process that required great technical skill. By contrast, ease and simplicity were the goal of linoleum block printing in the early years of the twentieth century. Developed as a floor covering, linoleum was soft, and without the grain that makes wood tricky to carve.

This exhibition will include relief prints from around world, dating from the fourteenth century to the present. Among them will be prints after Albrecht Diirer and Pieter Paul Rubens. Color relief prints from Europe, Japan, and America will represent the development and gradual refmement of the media. Wood engravings by the English pioneer Thomas Bewick will contrast with the bright color linocuts of V oj tech Preissig, the Czech-born champion of this process in America.

Carved printing blocks from wood and linoleum blocks, and cutting tools, will explicate the process of making a color relief print. The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated, didactic pamphlet, distributed free to the public, and funded by a gift from Bernard and Louise Palitz.

The picture shows Erich Heckel, Self-Portrait, 1919, color woodcut, Gift of Kate Butler Peterson, 2009. -- www.worcesterart.org