Woodcut

Since its origins in China, the practice of woodcut has spread around the world from Europe to other parts of Asia, and to Latin America.

[1] In both Europe and East Asia, traditionally the artist only designed the woodcut, and the block-carving was left to specialist craftsmen, called formschneider or block-cutters, some of whom became well known in their own right.

Among these, the best-known are the 16th-century Hieronymus Andreae (who also used "Formschneider" as his surname), Hans Lützelburger and Jost de Negker, all of whom ran workshops and also operated as printers and publishers.

The division of labour had the advantage that a trained artist could adapt to the medium relatively easily, without needing to learn the use of woodworking tools.

As a relief method, it is only necessary to ink the block and bring it into firm and even contact with the paper or cloth to achieve an acceptable print.

Many were sold to pilgrims at their destination, and glued to walls in homes, inside the lids of boxes, and sometimes even included in bandages over wounds, which was superstitiously believed to help healing.

The explosion of sales of cheap woodcuts in the middle of the century led to a fall in standards, and many popular prints were very crude.

Michael Wolgemut was significant in making German woodcuts more sophisticated from about 1475, and Erhard Reuwich was the first to use cross-hatching (far harder to do than engraving or etching).

In the first half of the 16th century, high quality woodcuts continued to be produced in Germany and Italy, where Titian and other artists arranged for some to be made.

The popular "floating world" genre of ukiyo-e originated in the second half of the seventeenth century, with prints in monochrome or two colours.

They had a great influence on many artists, notably Édouard Manet, Pierre Bonnard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Félix Vallotton and Mary Cassatt.

[6] Though the Japanese influence was reflected in many artistic media, including painting, it did lead to a revival of the woodcut in Europe, which had been in danger of extinction as a serious art medium.

Artists, notably Edvard Munch and Franz Masereel, continued to use the medium, which in Modernism came to appeal because it was relatively easy to complete the whole process, including printing, in a studio with little special equipment.

In China, where the individual print did not develop until the nineteenth century, the reverse is true, and early colour woodcuts mostly occur in luxury books about art, especially the more prestigious medium of painting.

[8] In Japan colour technique, called nishiki-e in its fully developed form, spread more widely, and was used for prints, from the 1760s on.

Text was nearly always monochrome, as were images in books, but the growth of the popularity of ukiyo-e brought with it demand for ever-increasing numbers of colours and complexity of techniques.

Artists such as Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway were influenced by the Japanese prints now available and fashionable in Europe to create a suitable style, with flat areas of colour.

In the 20th century, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner of the Die Brücke group developed a process of producing coloured woodcut prints using a single block applying different colours to the block with a brush à la poupée and then printing (halfway between a woodcut and a monotype).

[9] A remarkable example of this technique is the 1915 Portrait of Otto Müller woodcut print from the collection of the British Museum.

[14] The Swedish printmaker Torsten Billman (1909–1989) developed during the 1930s and 1940s a variant chiaroscuro technique with several gray tones from ordinary printing ink.

In Europe, Russia, and China, woodcut art was being used during this time as well to spread leftist politics such as socialism, communism, and anti-fascism.

He created the woodcut engravings of the iconic skeleton (calaveras) figures that are prominent in Mexican arts and culture today (such as in Disney Pixar's Coco).

[22][20] The TGP attracted artists from all around the world including African American printmaker Elizabeth Catlett, whose woodcut prints later influenced the art of social movements in the US in the 1960s and 1970s.

The form and style of woodcut aesthetic allowed a diverse range of topics and visual culture to look unified.

[24] Artermio Rodriguez is another artist who lives in Tacambaro, Michoacán who makes politically charged woodcut prints about contemporary issues.

[1] Europe Japan (Ukiyo-e) In parts of the world (such as the arctic) where wood is rare and expensive, the woodcut technique is used with stone as the medium for the engraved image.