Prints

About

A print is made by inking a prepared matrix and pressing paper against it, so the same image can be pulled many times. There are four families. In relief methods such as woodcut the raised surface carries the ink; in intaglio, including engraving, etching and aquatint, ink sits in cut or bitten lines; in lithography, grease and water keep image and blank areas apart; in screenprinting ink is forced through a stencil.

The Diamond Sutra printed in China in 868 is the earliest dated printed book. In Europe Albrecht Dürer took woodcut and engraving to new precision around 1500, Rembrandt made etching painterly, and Francisco Goya used aquatint for The Disasters of War (c. 1810–20). Japanese ukiyo-e artists such as Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige made colour woodblock prints for a wide public. Käthe Kollwitz, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol later used printmaking for protest, experiment and mass imagery.