What the drawing looks like is known to everyone. But what is engraving - not everyone knows. Meanwhile, both drawing and engraving belong to the same section of fine art, called graphics. The word "graphics" comes from the Greek "grafo", which means in Russian "I write", "I draw". The name itself shows how much in common between writing and drawing. Indeed, the artist draws on paper and often with the same thing that he writes with - a pen, a pencil. Moreover, the main means of expression graphics is not a picturesque richness of color, but a line, a stroke.
In graphics, the plane of a sheet of paper is always felt. The lines of the drawing freely fall on it, obediently following the flight of the artist's thoughts. It is not for nothing that in graphics people often talk about individual "handwriting", about the unique originality of the manner of expression.
Engraving has much in common with drawing. She also operates with a stroke and a line, color almost always plays only an auxiliary role in it. However, the main difference between engraving and drawing is that the engraver does not draw directly on paper, but first applies the image to some hard surface, and then transfers the image to paper from this surface.
An engraving is also called an imprint on paper, obtained from a specially processed printed board. A wooden board, a metal plate, a smooth stone, etc. can serve as a printed board. The artist personally applies an image to this printing plate and processes it accordingly. Depending on the material and the way it is processed, different types, or techniques, engravings are distinguished: etching, lithography, woodcuts, etc. But the board itself has only an auxiliary meaning: the artist’s goal is an imprint on paper - an impression, or, as his sometimes called, printmaking. True, not every print is considered a print, but only one that is printed under the direct supervision of the author and is not applied, illustrative, but independent, as they say, easel character.
But what is the meaning of engraving? Why does an engraver perform complex and time-consuming work on wood, metal, stone, and does not immediately draw on paper?
A drawing, like a painting, can only be made in one copy. It is unique in nature. It cannot be repeated, because each copy and reproduction is always worse than the original. The situation is different with engraving. Its main quality is circulation - the ability to make many prints from one printed board. All these prints will be equivalent works of art. On any of the sheets, the author can put his signature: after all, they are all printed from a board processed by his hand. The engraving is inexpensive - much cheaper than a drawing, watercolor, and even more so a painting.
The custom of hanging reproductions on the wall is based precisely on the high cost of paintings. A cheap reproduction can always be removed and replaced with another. However, photomechanical reproduction is not art. And not only because in a reproduction, as a rule, the color is distorted, the size changes and all the subtleties of the original are lost. Reproduction is not art because it does not have the immediacy of the original, that elusive presence of the author, by which the authentic is valuable. piece of art. A reproduction cannot create an accurate representation of a work of art - it serves only as a reminder of it.
An engraving is an original work of art. Each author's print is as original as an oil painting. That's the charm of the print, that it gives a large number of equivalent prints, each of which is an independent work of art. The artist-engraver speaks the language of his art, taking into account all the features of the material and technique - and his work is therefore original and unique. The soul of the artist lives in it, the trembling of his hand is felt. And this real art is available to everyone: a large number of prints can be made from one board, which makes them cheap.
The possibilities of engraving are extremely wide, its artistic language is rich and varied. The multifaceted, flexible art of engraving attracted the attention of many outstanding artists. Remarkable masters of engraving were such great painters as A. Dürer, Rembrandt, F. Goya; tried their hand at engraving by A. Van Dyck, E. Delacroix, C. Corot, J.-F. Millais. Of the Russian artists, O. Kiprensky, I. Shishkin, V. Serov did a lot of engraving. The great Ukrainian poet and artist T. Shevchenko did a lot for the development of engraving.
One should not think that engraving was just an addition to painting. This is a completely independent art form.
There are a number of artists who have devoted their work exclusively to engraving. The names of D.-B. Piranesi, O. Daumier, A. Ostroumova-Lebedeva, V. Favorsky are as famous as the names of outstanding painters. In their work, reality is reflected in all its fullness and depth, in all its complexity and richness.
All these artists valued in engraving not only its circulation (although this played an important role for them), but also its expressive possibilities. Stability and certainty combined with immediacy of expression; laconicism, sharpness and accuracy of the transmission of reality, combined with the charm of the material itself - all these features of engraving opened up a wide field of activity for artists.
In Europe, engraving appeared relatively recently - in the 15th century. Compared to, say, a fresco or mosaic that has existed for millennia, this is a very young art. However, its significance is no less than that. Not a single art has managed to become so massive, so widespread, so close to the widest strata of the population so immediately. Engraving arose as an art for the people, and this determined its character. Engravings were sold at fairs and bazaars, and ordinary people bought them. Cheap engraved sheets brightened up the life of the working people, decorated their homes. For the illiterate, they replaced books: in bright, memorable pictures, the content of entertaining and moralizing stories was revealed. Engravings in XV-XVI centuries were a kind of newspapers; the image was combined with the text, which reported all sorts of news.
The development of engraving went parallel to the development of painting, but in its own special way. It is no coincidence that the time of its emergence and flourishing was a time of great popular unrest. The engraving most directly reflected the thoughts and aspirations of the people. Lubki Velyka peasant war, satirical leaflets of the Great French Revolution called for an uprising, for a struggle. And until now, engraving is one of the most popular, democratic and operational types of art. Her role has changed, but even now she is the best conductor of genuine high art to the masses. It is no coincidence that it is gaining more and more recognition in our country.
The most ancient engraving technique is woodcut, or woodcut. Its name comes from Greek word"xylon", which means wooden plank. The idea of printing from a wooden board arose in ancient times. Back in the 4th century, the so-called heel was known - printing color patterns on fabrics. Printing, the forerunner of woodcuts, has been common in folk art for many centuries.
The first examples of woodcuts appeared in the East as early as the 8th century. In Europe, the first impression from a wooden board on paper was apparently made at the end of the 14th century. This old woodcut is called edging: it is done on a board with a longitudinal cut.
For woodcuts, boards of soft wood, mainly pear wood, are used. The engraver, working with a knife and a chisel, takes out a tree in those places that should remain white in the drawing, and the lines that will be dark appear in the form of partitions. Printing ink is rolled onto this convex wooden drawing, then a sheet of paper is placed on top and ironed with a bone - folding. The drawing goes to paper.
Russian folk print "Cat of Kazan". 18th century Woodcut
Woodcuts immediately became widespread. Playing cards, cheap icons, lubok pictures, satirical "flying sheets" were printed from a wooden board, on which both letters and a drawing were cut by hand.
Before the invention of printing, books were printed in the same way: each page was cut out entirely with text and illustrations, and then the prints were glued back together.
With the development of printing, woodcut printing became even more widespread. All illustrations in books were made in this way, and often the same picture or vignette wandered from one book to another.
Edged woodcut is not only the most ancient type of engraving, but also the most conditional and specific. It cannot be compared even remotely with any kind of graphics. Her language is special. The xylograph works only with contrasts of black and white. It cannot convey any tonal transitions or chiaroscuro. The image inevitably turns out to be planar. This is the weakness of edged woodcuts, and this is its strength. The old masters used simple means to create sheets of extraordinary beauty and decorativeness. In the interlacing and play of smooth lines, contrasts of black and white spots, they were able to convey the most diverse shades of feelings and experiences: from idyllic peaceful rest to high tragic tension. The dramatic scenes of the "Dance of Death" by G. Holbein (1497-1543), the fantasy of a folk tale in the engravings of L. Cranach (1472-1553), the fragile landscapes of A. Altdorfer (c. 1480-1538) belong to the best examples of world classics.
Particularly remarkable famous series A. Durer (1471-1528) "Apocalypse" and "Life of Mary".
The sharp contrasts of black and white in "Apocalypse" create a sense of tragedy. The stormy movement of the lines, swirling, twisting curls of strokes convey the tension of the struggle, the swift movement of the four horsemen - Death, War, Pestilence, Judgment. The furious running of horses sweeps away everything in its path - the power of the church, the emperor, wealth. Here, in an allegorical, figurative form, the ideas of the peasant war, the great people's revolution, were realized.
A. Durer. Four riders. From the Apocalypse series. 1498. Woodcut
Sheets from the series "Life of Mary" are imbued with softness and lyricism. Peaceful everyday scenes breathe a sense of peace. These sheets are silvery and airy, their lines are smooth and form a beautiful ornamental pattern.
The Italian woodcut of the 16th century, in contrast to the democratic, powerful, sometimes rough art of the German masters, is more refined and decorative. It was in Italy at the beginning of the 16th century that the technique of color woodcut engraving was invented.
The idea of using color to enhance the expressiveness of engraving arose almost simultaneously with the advent of the engraving itself. Popular popular prints still captivate us with their bright colors. However, the color is not printed on them: only the outline was printed, and the entire coloring was done by hand.
In 1516, the Italian engraver Hugo da Carpi (1479-1532) received in the Venetian Senate a privilege for the method of color printing invented by him, which was called chiaroscuro, that is, chiaroscuro. Hugo da Carpi printed his engravings from three boards - each in a different color. Since he did not use contour and did not use sharply contrasting colors, his sheets created the impression of really chiaroscuro, soft tone transitions. Hugo da Carpi created a series of sheets, amazing in their subtlety of nuances and color harmonies. At the beginning of the 17th century, color woodcuts appeared in the countries of the Far East.
The heyday of Japanese color woodcuts dates back to the 18th - early 19th centuries. At this time, such remarkable masters as Harunobu (1725-1770), Utamaro (1753-1806), Hokusai (1760-1849), Syaraku (worked in 1794-1795), whose work had a significant impact on European art, worked.
Japanese colored woodcuts are somewhat different from Chinese ones, although they have much in common and are done in the same way. Three people are involved in the work: the author of the drawing, the carver and the printer. But its goal is not to reproduce painting, but to create an independent original work.
Therefore, the carver and the printer enjoy considerable freedom: the printer, for example, can choose the colors indicated by the author of the drawing only in a general form (the drawing, as a rule, is made with a contour on transparent paper, which is then glued to the board).
Hokusai. Wave. From the series "36 Views of Fuji". 1823-1829. Color woodcut
The main task of the Japanese artist was to express a certain emotional state, a certain mood of joy, sadness or light lyrical sadness. Hence the apparent monotony of the plots of Japanese woodcuts. In one and the same plot - a landscape or a theatrical scene - the artists were able to convey an endless variety of moods, to capture the instantaneous state of the human soul. The engravings are similar to Japanese poems - just as subtle, lyrical and refined.
The artist does not pursue external credibility - his sea can be pink, and the sky at night - white. But this violation of the natural color of objects is not arbitrary or accidental, it is determined by a number of patterns, including the traditional Japanese attitude to color, and a keen sense of the musicality of color relationships, and a strict artistic calculation, taking into account the expressive possibilities of various color combinations.
In this way, using the harmony or contrast of colorful combinations, japanese artist could convey not only feelings and moods, but also human characters. Women's images from Utamaro's "Big Heads" series, distinguished by nobility, restrained pride and graceful simplicity, are built on harmonious combinations of soft, calm tones. On the contrary, Shyaraku's prints, depicting actors mostly in villainous roles, are in stark contrast. The actor's face, distorted by a conditional grimace of rage, appears as a bright spot on a dark shimmering background (which is printed not with paint, but with mica powder). Sharp contrasts of deep, gloomy tones create a special dramatic tension.
The old masters worked on a board of wood with a longitudinal cut, that is, on an ordinary board (edged engraving). It is difficult to work - the fibers of the tree resist the knife. At the end of the 18th century, the English engraver Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) invented a new, modern method of engraving - on the cross section of the trunk, the so-called end engraving. Buick did not take pear wood, as before, but harder varieties. The trunk of a tree (beech, palm, boxwood) is cut across the fibers, and since these trees have a thin trunk, to get a large board, several small ones are glued together, carefully fitted to each other and polished. They work on such a board with a cutter, achieving not just contrasts of black and white, but gradual transitions from dark to light. Drawing with such work turns out to be clear and thin, every smallest stroke is visible. Small strokes sculpt volume, a grid of white strokes conveys well aerial perspective. End engraving is not as flat as edged engraving - it has depth, chiaroscuro, nuances. This type of engraving became widespread in the 19th century - it was used mainly in book illustration.
The names of A. Menzel, G. Dore, A. Agin are closely connected with the book. We know their graphics well from book engravings. However, these craftsmen made only drawings (often directly on the board), and skillful carvers embodied these drawings in wood.
The end woodcut with amazing accuracy reproduces the drawing with a pen - sweeping strokes, a grid of small hatching, spectacular juicy spots.
Engravings by E. E. Bernardsky (1819-1889) from drawings by A. Agin and G. Gagarin are made with such impeccable skill that the engraver turns into a draftsman's co-author here. When comparing Agin's surviving drawings for "Dead Souls" with the engravings made by Bernardsky, it is clear that the engraver brought to these illustrations a special picturesqueness, freshness and richness of velvet black tones, chased clarity of the line. Agin's drawings in the embodiment of Bernardsky received a new life, a new artistic quality.
In the second half of the 19th century, woodcuts began to reproduce not only drawings, but also paintings. This kind of engraving, built on combinations of parallel, sometimes very monotonous strokes, conveys the general tone of the picture, light and shadow. The tone engraving has a purely reproduction, handicraft character.
True, in this area, among the huge mass of artisan carvers, there are genuine woodcut virtuosos (V. Mate, L. Seryakov, Pannemaker), whose engravings amaze with the subtlety and thoroughness of their work. Creative individuality engraver always manifests itself even in reproduction work, because it depends on him what exactly to emphasize, highlight in the reproduced picture.
This is especially clear from the peculiar creative competition between V. V. Mate (1856-1917) and his student I. N. Pavlov. Both of them, both the teacher and the student, made engravings from Repin's study of the head of a laughing Cossack. Both of these engravings are very accurate, very faithfully convey the original, but in one the picturesqueness of the study, texture, brush strokes (Pavlov) are emphasized, and in the other - powerful Repin's plasticity, energetic, juicy modeling of the face (Mate).
The end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th century is the time of the revival of woodcuts. With the advent of photomechanical methods of reproduction, the need to use woodcuts to reproduce paintings disappears. F. Vallotton (1865-1925) and P. Gauguin (1848-1903) in France, E. Munch (1863-1944) in Norway, E. Barlach (1870-1938) in Germany open up new possibilities in this ancient technique.
Color woodcuts, almost completely forgotten in the 17th-19th centuries, are also being revived. The Frenchman O. Leper (1849-1918) and the Englishman W. Nicholson (1872-1949) were the first to start making color engravings (using, in particular, the experience of the chiaroscuro masters). The revival of color engraving in European countries is largely due to the fact that at the end of the 19th century, European artists first became acquainted with the poetic and colorful work of Japanese masters.
Modern artists make both edging and end woodcuts. The main expressive means of woodcut are the spot and the line. At first glance, this is not enough, the technique seems to be primitive. However, when one examines the sheets of woodcut engraving in succession, one is struck by the variety of techniques used by woodcutters. The soft, almost imperceptible transitions of color in Leper's engravings are reminiscent of the Japanese masters of the 18th century. Nicholson fills large, clearly demarcated planes with solid contrasting colors. The energetic, sharp manner of the Belgian F. Maserel (born 1889) differs from the epic-calm, broad manner of Gauguin. Laconic, generalized to the limit, Vallotton's engravings are entirely built on a contrasting comparison of flat black and white spots. On the contrary, in the engravings of Barlach (who was not only a graphic artist, but also a sculptor), we feel a clear desire for volume. Depending on the topic, on the task set, the xylographer is looking for a new expressiveness, a new expressive technique. And we see how a sheet of paper comes to life, with what accuracy and sharpness the artist conveys on it the velvet blackness of the night, and the sparkle of snow, and the movement and flashing of the street crowd. The seemingly primitive technique turns out to be infinitely flexible. No wonder woodcuts are a favorite technique these days.
In the work of progressive masters of our time, the former role of woodcuts as the most democratic and mass art form is being revived. It is characteristic that the artists turn to the almost forgotten technique of the old masters - edged engraving. Refusing to imitate painting, they strive to reveal the specifics of woodcuts, to use its bright and sharp language.
The German artist Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) dedicated her art to the life and struggle of the working class. Her engravings from the "War" series sound like a powerful protest against the most terrible national disaster. Deep grief, despair, indignation at senseless cruelty - all this is conveyed by the artist with amazing power and great human pain.
Maserel's work is closely connected with the most pressing questions modernity. It has outgrown the framework of the national school, has become international. The artist-citizen Maserel consciously put his art at the service of the liberation struggle of mankind. His engravings are a powerful weapon in this struggle. They are crisp and clear, their content immediately reaches the viewer, they look like small black and white posters. Matherel speaks in a full voice, leaving nothing unsaid, nothing unclear.
Mazerel usually publishes his engravings in the form of a series of books, the so-called "novels in pictures". The engravings in these books are united by a common plot or idea. They have no text. A similar form of using graphics, invented by Maserel, expands the possibilities of engraving, allows you to show the development of the plot in time. The story of a young worker finding his way through the class struggle; the life of a modern person who seeks and does not find happiness and truth in the jungle big city; a revolutionary idea that illuminates with its radiance all aspects of modern life - these are the plots of these books, deeply folk in design, simple and impressive in execution.
With all the difference in the individual manners of Kollwitz and Maserel, they have one thing in common - the desire to simplify the form, to make it clearer and more concise. Generalized silhouettes, the visibility of the entire sheet as a whole, some roughness of the stroke - all this allows us to talk about a kind of processing in their work of the traditions of folk graphics.
One of the brightest pages in the history of woodcuts is the Soviet woodcut. She warmly responds to the great events of our time, actively participates in the construction of a new life.
Already in the first years of the revolution, a whole series of easel woodcuts appeared, in which the artists, each in their own way, sought to reflect revolutionary events express a sense of admiration for the heroic struggle of the people.
The spirit of the collapse of the past and the all-destroying power of the new, breaking the old life, is permeated with the "Armored car" by N. N. Kupreyanov (1894-1933). A huge, heavy car makes its way through a narrow street. The walls are cracking like houses of cards, miserable houses are falling apart. The artist uses deformation, distortion of proportions to sharpen the sense of the inevitability of the death of the old world.
The engraving "Crossing the Kerch Strait" by P. Pavlinov, on the contrary, is distinguished by an epic, calm character. There is no such intense emotionality in it. The action takes place on a wide ice expanse of a frozen strait. The composition is simple and balanced, the whole picture is immediately captured by the eye.
Heroic images of fighters full of pathos civil war gave in his portraits of the heroes of Perekop Ukrainian graphic artist V. Kasiyan. The themes of labor, intense and inspired construction are reflected in the engravings of A. Kravchenko, P. Staronosov and others.
Brilliant achievements in the field of color engraving Soviet masters the older generation of Falileev and Ostroumova-Lebedeva. They began their creative path even before the revolution.
The woodcuts by V. D. Falileev (1879-1948) are based on sharp romantic color contrasts. He moved away from woodcuts quite early, turning to engraving on linoleum, as a technique more appropriate for his monumental and decorative tasks.
A place of honor in the creation of Russian color engraving belongs to A.P. Ostroumova-Lebedeva (1875-1955). Her engravings are distinguished by amazing harmony, subtlety and musicality. With poetic lyricism, the artist conveys the peculiar charm of St. Petersburg - strict architecture, the brilliance and transparency of the water of the canals, the pale northern lighting. Her engravings are exquisite in color, they combine the outstanding talent of the painter with the high skill of the graphic artist, who is fluent in all the expressive elements of woodcuts. Laconism, the magnificent use of a white sheet of paper, which the artist knows how to organize with a few precisely found strokes, a restrained and noble combination of color spots - these are the main artistic techniques of Ostroumova-Lebedeva. With their help, she creates a special poetic atmosphere, conveys not the appearance of the city, but the poetic mood that it evokes in us. Ostroumova-Lebedeva is a student of Mate. However, in her work there is nothing from the tone reproduction woodcuts of the 19th century.
V. Favorsky. Doe and grapes. Illustration for "Gen Shen". M. Prishvina. 1933. Woodcut
The traditions of Mate were continued and picked up by another of his students - I. N. Pavlov (1872-1951).
Old Moscow, with its crooked lanes, small houses, cobblestone pavement, has now almost disappeared. The face of the capital has changed beyond recognition. Pavlov's engravings have preserved for us that Moscow as it was half a century ago. With the objectivity of a historian, he paints picturesque corners of Moscow: courtyards covered with snow, old churches, quiet streets. The technique of tone engraving, in which Pavlov worked, conveys well the gradual light and shade transitions, various details, giving special authenticity to the image.
However, the main achievements of Soviet woodcuts are primarily related to the book. We can rightfully be proud of our Soviet school of woodcut illustrators, which was established back in the 1920s and 1930s - this is one of the largest phenomena in contemporary art. Engraving masters approached the book as a single artistic organism. They did not only illustrations, but thought through all the design elements - binding, dust jacket, headpieces and other decorations. The format of the book, the location of the illustration on the sheet, the choice (and sometimes the creation) of the font - all this was the work of the artists. the main objective their work - compliance appearance style and character books literary work.
As a result of these conditions, genuine masterpieces of book art arose, in which all the elements of graphic design were organically combined and the writer's thought appeared especially convex and bright.
Turning to woodcuts for the design of the book was not accidental. Woodcut has always been a companion of the book. An engraved board can be directly inserted into the set and printed (albeit in small runs) on a conventional printing machine. In its appearance, woodcut with its black strokes goes well with type, and here an unlimited field of activity opens up for the artist: a black bold type can be combined with a light tone engraving, or a lighter and thinner type with an intense and contrasting engraving. Book design is a whole art with its own laws, complexities and discoveries.
The leading master of Soviet book engraving, the creator of this wonderful art and its theory is V. A. Favorsky (born 1886). For almost half a century, he cut about a thousand boards - almost exclusively book illustrations. Dozens of books are decorated with his magnificent engravings. And he illustrates each work differently, following not only the text, but also the style of the author.
For the book by A. France "Judgments of Abbé Jerome Coignard" he made capital letters with figures, reviving the ancient tradition of the decorated alphabet. But these initial letters themselves are by no means stylized, the figures are alive, voluminous, placed in a specific spatial environment.
Favorsky's graphic techniques are strikingly diverse. With the same virtuosity, he masters a spot, a silhouette, a contour, a white stroke. Smooth, parallel shading gives his engravings a soft silver color, energetic strokes give them dynamics. In the engravings of Favorsky, the plasticity of the form, the spatial depth, conveyed by simple means that do not violate the flatness of the sheet, are especially valuable. We find a similar combination of volume and plane on the frescoes of ancient Russian masters.
The influence of ancient frescoes is felt in Favorsky's illustrations for Boris Godunov. Large figures fill the entire sheet, the composition is calmly heavy and majestic. The unhurried and strict structure of Pushkin's tragedy found its expression in the equally strict rhythms of engravings.
"House in Kolomna", one of the most whimsical creations of Pushkin, Favorsky illustrates in a completely different manner. Wide white fields dotted small lungs engravings. They seem to flutter around the columns of the text, reminiscent of the poet's unconstrained drawings in the margins of drafts. There are cursory notes, and female heads, and bizarre figures that accompany all the movements of the text. A surprisingly thin and flexible stroke, like a stroke of a pen, freely follows the flight of the artist's imagination.
V. Favorsky. Cry of Yaroslavna. "From an illustration to "The Lay of Igor's Campaign". 1950. Woodcut
Favorsky subtly and penetratingly conveys the features of the poetic language of Pushkin, Shakespeare, Burns. Each of his books is the perfection of the fusion of artistic and literary language. In each of his books, Favorsky finds new fresh tricks; All his books are unique.
Favorsky, like no one else, was able to understand the deep nationality of "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", to convey its national Russian character. The breadth and purity of the figurative structure of this ancient poem found perfect embodiment in the epic (despite their small size) engravings by Favorsky. Fields flooded with light, dense forests, calm rivers - this is the background against which the action unfolds. The musicality of these wonderful landscapes emphasizes the lyrical nature of the poem, the subtle feeling native nature spilled in it.
But with the same brightness, Favorsky can recreate the spirit of old Scotland. In illustrations for Burns' poems, he uses the motifs of Scottish nature; among the vignettes we will find heather, and burdock, and wild rose. And in the very construction of the illustrations, with their ascetic simplicity of solution, the harsh and freedom-loving spirit of the inhabitants of this country is reflected, as it were.
But Favorsky is not the only master of book woodcuts. Next to him worked and work such major artists as P. Pavlinov, A. Kravchenko, students of Favorsky A. Goncharov, M. Pikov, F. Konstantinov, G. Echeistov and other younger artists.
A. Kravchenko. Auction. From illustrations for "Portrait" by N. Gogol. 1925. Woodcut
AI Kravchenko (1889-1940) created an interesting type of romantic illustration. He chooses literary works of a tense-emotional, fantastic nature, emphasizes their fantasy, romantic tension of feelings. In contrast to Favorsky's clear classical manner, Kravchenko's engravings are contrasting and dynamic. The personal, subjective experience of the artist, his attitude to events, and not the objective image of these events, is put forward in the first place in them. Kravchenko's nervous, quivering touch enhances the emotional intensity of his engravings.
The illustrations by P. Ya. Pavlinov (born 1881) are distinguished by a clear, calm character, thoughtful penetration into the style of a literary work. But at the same time, the artist has a deep sense of tragedy. Such is his portrait of Tyutchev, surprisingly conveying the tragedy of the poet's loneliness, torn apart by painful internal contradictions, an excited witness of his time, not understood by his contemporaries. Pavlinov is an artist-philosopher. He knows how to penetrate into the depths of the psychology of his characters, to reveal their tense, complex and contradictory inner world.
Favorsky's students are not alike. A wonderful teacher, Favorsky provided his students with freedom in the development of their creative individuality.
A. Goncharov. Illustration for the folk epic "Kalevipoeg". 1947. Woodcut
What they have in common is mastery of woodcut technique and a deep understanding of the specifics of book graphics. However, each of them approaches its task in its own way.
M. I. Pikov (b. 1903) makes illustrations of chasing-strict, connected with the plane of the page, slightly stylized. F. D. Konstantinov (born 1910) perfectly captures the rough genre of Chaucer's poems. Sharply, sharply, almost grotesquely illustrates the works of Heine G. A. Echeistov (1897-1946).
The work of A. D. Goncharov (born 1903) is distinguished by its decorative effect. His sleepy engravings are built on soft pictorial contrasts, in which, even when the artist uses only black and white, the sensation of color is accurately conveyed.
Naturally, master scribes are engaged almost exclusively in black and white engraving. This does not mean, however, that they are not interested in color.
Soviet colored woodcuts are distinguished by an exceptional variety of techniques. Here is the classic manner of printing from several boards, when new colors appear when they are superimposed on each other (Kravchenko, Echeistov). Sometimes only a general tone is given, and the contour is printed in black or even left in white (Goncharov, Epifanov). Sometimes woodcuts are limited to manual tinting with watercolors (Mitrokhin), etc. - you can’t count everything.
Nowadays, linocut has become widespread, partly replacing woodcuts.
Linoleum engraving is done in much the same way as woodcut engraving. They work with a knife and a special engraver, which has the shape of a groove. The image, as well as on a wooden board, is convex, and on the print there is an artistic effect very close to the edged engraving (lack of halftones, spot, black stroke on white paper). But linoleum is cheaper than wood, and it is much easier to work on it, since it is much more pliable, soft and, most importantly, uniform than the softest wooden board. This explains such a wide distribution of linocut today and its popularity among those masters who strive for relevance, for a quick response to the events of our time.
A striking example in this regard is the work of P. N. Staronosov (1893-1942). The artist of high civic pathos Staronosov understood very well the huge role of graphics in the education of the viewer. He was one of the first to start work on the creation of a Soviet print, highly artistic, accessible to the general public, embodying the heroic spirit of our era. Staronosov's linocuts are dedicated to the themes of socialist construction. They are courageous and heroic; the simple contrasts of black and white give them a stark clarity. They are conditional to the extent that any linocut is conditional, having at its disposal only contrasts of black and white; this convention does not turn into an empty play of forms, but serves as a means of generalization, giving the sheet integrity and bright decorativeness.
Like woodcuts, linocuts can be colored. Staronosov's color engravings are distinguished by exceptional tact in the use of color. The artist, as a rule, uses a small number of boards; large planes are filled with color, sometimes it is used as a background on which a black outline is printed.
Such color conciseness, in addition to purely artistic, decorative effects, also has a purely practical meaning: engraving is easier to print, boards can withstand large print runs. Staronosov was the first to produce a truly folk print, in fact, even a lubok, in the sense that his engravings were extremely cheap and really publicly available.
But colored linocut can also have a different, more luxurious and picturesque character. Falileev's color engravings amaze with their colorful unbridledness, overflowing temperament, and wide scope. Falileev often enhances the sound of color, exaggerates contrasts in order to convey an unusual moment in nature. Russian nature appears in his landscapes as bright, juicy, sparkling with extraordinary colorful richness. Often Falileev prints the same engraving in different color scheme, achieving in the same composition the sensation of either an alarming fiery sunset, or bright twilight, or a dazzling sunny day.
V. Favorsky. Donkeys. From "Samarkand series". 1943. Engraving on linoleum
Falileev's student I. A. Sokolov (born 1890) solves somewhat different problems in his color linocuts. His engravings are less romantic; in them we will not find the brightness and decorativeness inherent in Falileev's work. Sokolov seems more modest and prosaic. H®, using a large number of boards, he achieves complex color transitions, bringing his engravings closer to painting.
Favorsky's "Samarkand Series" represents another type of linocut. Favorsky refuses color and seeks to reveal the specifics of the material; his engravings are laconic, flat, built on a clear silhouette. But with these sparing means, the master masterfully conveys both the space and the whole atmosphere of the withering, hot Central Asian summer. Nothing can be added or subtracted here; it seems that the color would break the integrity of these monolithically built sheets.
The traditions of Favorsky were picked up and continued by a group of young masters of linocut, who have come to the fore recently. The work of G. Zakharov, I. Golitsyn, A. Borodin, L. Tukachev and other young artists shows the rich and varied possibilities of black and white linocut. Their works are contemporary best sense this word. The rhythm of the era permeates these sharp, dynamic sheets.
Zakharov's engravings are built large, generalized, with an emphasis on the plane of the sheet, almost always from the point of view from the bottom up. The artist, in the most seemingly familiar and ordinary, reveals unexpected importance and significance. The activity of his attitude to life is also expressed in his very graphic manner - energetic, sweeping, with a sharp, large stroke.
Golitsyn's engravings seem more closed and intimate. Their plots are always simple: a street intersection, an electric train car, everyday life that surrounds us. But these simple scenes are depicted with great human warmth and good-natured humor. Technically, Golitsyn's engravings are impeccable, he freely uses strokes, his strokes are varied - from the most subtle and light to rich, juicy. He also uses a white stroke (usually rarely used in linocuts). All this gives his sheets softness and tonal richness, a light silver color.
But linocut can be done, not only using a stroke. In the engravings of Borodin, the main technique is the silhouette. They are built on the opposition of a spot silhouette and a white sheet of paper. This strict manner exactly corresponds in character to the harsh nature of the North, to which most of Borodin's works are devoted. The sheet of paper itself is here the essential element of the image; with the help of these large pieces of white, the endless expanse of the snow-covered tundra is conveyed; its emptiness is emphasized by the rare dark figures of people and animals, and the depth of space is the difference in the scales of the figures of the near and far plans.
Linocut became widespread outside the Soviet Union.
In the technique of linocut, most of the works of the famous "Folk Graphics Workshop" in Mexico were made. In 1937 a group of young Mexican artists founded this Workshop. Their goal was to create art accessible to the people, promoting the ideas of progress and revolution. The struggle for peace, for national independence, for bread and freedom - these are the themes of engravings.
Young enthusiasts worked in difficult conditions - there was not enough money, paper. The printing press they bought was very old. There is a legend that the Paris Communards printed their leaflets on this machine. Engravings had to be printed only in black and white, as there was not enough money for paints.
The works of Leopoldo Mendez (b. 1902), head of the Workshop, and other members of the workshop are distinguished by their monumental character. Laconic, simple compositions (usually large format), sharp, strong strokes perfectly convey images folk heroes and scenes of the revolutionary struggle of the masses.
Linocut and woodcut techniques are conditional, with their own pronounced specificity. They do not try to imitate drawing or painting, but have their own vivid and expressive language. With the help of this language, artists rather depict their attitude to the world, and do not give an impartially accurate picture of it. Therefore, these techniques are not suitable for every artistic task. Convex engraving is powerless if you need to capture the instantaneous changing beauty of the landscape, the play of light and shadow, the transparency of the air, the elusive changes in the human face - something that the drawing succeeds well.
Medieval woodcutters spent a lot of effort trying to achieve an imitation of the drawing. To do this, they had to take out large planes of wood and make very thin partitions, which, when printed, should give an equally thin outline.
The method of in-depth rather than convex engraving, invented in Italy, greatly facilitated this task. The lines cut on the metal gave a pattern of thin strokes when printed. The imitation of the drawing turned out to be natural without violence to the material. This method of in-depth engraving is called engraving with a chisel and, like woodcuts, appeared in the 15th century.
L. Mendes. Execution. From the "Day of Life" series. 1949; Engraving on linoleum
Probably for the first time this technique was used in the workshops of goldsmiths. Jewelers have long carved all kinds of patterns, monograms, etc. on gold and silver. If an ornament with a successful pattern came across, the goldsmith smeared it with a special composition and imprinted the pattern on a piece of paper so as not to forget and make the same one. The impression was sometimes so beautiful that the idea arose to carve a design on metal specifically in order to receive impressions. These were the first steps of incisor engraving. Initially, it was only an auxiliary tool for a jeweler, but very soon its scope expanded. Playing cards, small pictures of secular and spiritual content, funny genre scenes, made very skillfully and subtly, were printed from metal boards. Of course, for such mass production, it was not gold that was used as a printed board, but a cheaper metal - soft and elastic copper.
On copper, they work with a special tool-cutter, which is a steel rod, trihedral and tetrahedral, with an obliquely cut end. This end forms the cutting part. The engraver cuts a pattern on the copper, the resulting grooves are filled with ink, and the pattern is printed under pressure on damp paper, which absorbs the ink well.
Cutting lines requires quite a lot of force. Therefore, the chisel cannot freely follow the flight of the artist's imagination, the impulsive movements of his hands. For a cursory sketch, for individual handwriting, a cut engraving is not suitable. However, in the accuracy and accuracy of parallel hatching, in the correctness of intersecting lines, there is a peculiar charm that attracts artists who are looking for clarity and certainty in their work.
The engravings of the great masters of the 16th century Albrecht Dürer, Marcantonio Raimondi, Luke of Leiden amaze with their almost sculptural clarity and strict precision of forms. One of the best engravings is considered to be Dürer's sheet "Saint Jerome in the Cell". In the depths of a small cell sits, leaning over the table, a scientist. On the floor, in the rays of the sun, a lion is dozing. Peaceful silence is in the air. A calm order reigns in the room, all objects are clearly and clearly drawn against the background of the walls, take their place in space. The same orderliness is in the very manner of the artist. It seems that Durer draws line after line with slow movements of the chisel, calmly delineating volumes, calmly separating the transparent shadow and evenly illuminated surfaces of objects.
The artist has only a line at his disposal, only a line, but he uses it with perfect virtuosity. Thickening and crossing the strokes, he conveys chiaroscuro, with rare parallel lines - rays of light and an illuminated surface.
Incisive engraving was widely used for the reproduction of paintings.
Raimondi, a classic of engraving of the 16th century, never made engravings from his own drawings. All his work is a reproduction of paintings and frescoes by Raphael and other artists. We owe to Raimondi's engravings the fact that they preserved the compositions of long-lost paintings. For example, Michelangelo's famous cartoon, made by him in competition with Leonardo da Vinci, is his famous "Battle of Kashin". The cardboard was cut into pieces and perished, but we have a fairly complete picture of it thanks to Raimondi's engraving.
Of course, the engraved reproduction was not a reproduction in our understanding - it was rather a translation of painting into the language of lines. The work of an engraver who reproduces a picture is a creative work. Based on the picture, he creates an independent work of art, which has its own laws and specifics. Sometimes even an engraving surpasses a painting in some respects. So, for example, the engraving by N. I. Utkin (1780-1862) from the portrait of Pushkin by Kiprensky is the most faithful image of the great poet. Contemporaries believed that the similarity in engraving is much greater than in a pictorial portrait.
At present, engraving with a chisel is almost forgotten: it is a very difficult technique. It does not allow any corrections. The engraver must have an exceptionally firm hand and a sharp eye. Indeed, what extraordinary precision of work is needed to convey the volume and shape of an object with a grid of clear, once and for all cut lines. Engraving with a chisel requires not only skill, but also time from the master. Utkin's student F. I. Jordan (1800-1883) worked on an engraving from Raphael's painting "Transfiguration" for 15 years.
It is clear that the artists wanted to find a simpler, less time-consuming method of in-depth engraving; a way in which tedious and lengthy manual work could be avoided.
This method turned out to be etching - a technique in which the lines of the drawing were not cut out mechanically, but etched with acid. This, of course, greatly facilitated the work and opened up enormous artistic possibilities for engraving. The idea to use acid to etch a pattern originated in the 16th century. Already Dürer tried to make etchings. As a board, he took iron plates. But iron is not a suitable material: acid corrodes it too much, and the impression is rough. Later, etching began to be done on copper or zinc.
The board is covered with a primer-lacquer, consisting of wax mixed with resinous substances. Pre-melt the varnish and pour it over a warmed board. Cooling down, the varnish hardens somewhat, and the artist draws on it with a needle that resembles a sewing needle inserted into a wooden handle. The needle passes through the pliable ground to the surface of the board, the copper is exposed in these places, and the pattern appears red against the black varnish background. The board is then lowered into a bath of acid, usually nitric acid (or so-called "strong vodka", French for "au-fort"). The lacquer is not affected by acid, and it corrodes copper in exposed places. When varnish is removed from the board, it turns out to be covered with grooves, grooves; the drawing is cut into the board with the help of acid.
The etcher is spared from tedious and long manual work with a chisel, the needle moves freely over the wax varnish. Therefore, amateurs sometimes work in the etching technique. An etching depicting an allegorical female figure, made by Peter I, has been preserved. The inscription reads: "Peter Alekseevich, the Great Tsar of Russia, engraved this with a needle and strong vodka under the supervision of Adrian Schkhonebek (that is, under the supervision of this artist - V.T.) in Amsterdam, in 1698, in the bedroom of his apartment in the shipyard of the Austin Company.
Etching allows for greater immediacy of the image. With a needle, you can fix an instant impression of nature; when printing, all its freshness is preserved. Etching is closest to pen drawing - fast, dynamic, accurately reflecting all the movements of the artist's hand. The artist can set himself the most difficult tasks - etching is a flexible enough technique to solve them. The speed and comparative simplicity of board processing is also a considerable advantage of etching. It is this property that allows the artist to quickly and directly respond to the impressions of reality (for example, the French landscape painter Daubigny equipped a workshop boat and, floating on the river, made many landscape etchings from nature).
Being freer and more picturesque, the etching, however, retains many of the advantages of engraving engraving: the clarity and subtlety of the stroke, the large circulation (the etching produces more than 150 prints). This combination has made etching the favorite technique of artists of all times, up to the present day.
The greatest master of etching was Rembrandt (1606-1669). He was the artist who made etching really a great, independent art. Rembrandt's prints from the boards, not yet completely finished, have survived - the so-called different states of etching. According to them, one can judge the stages of the artist’s work, how he achieved the perfect artistic impression. Having made a test print, Rembrandt meticulously examined it, corrected it, then varnished those places on the board that needed corrections, and drew new details of the drawing with a needle. Rembrandt made a lot of such test prints, step by step approaching the exact embodiment of his plan.
Rembrandt was self-taught in engraving. All the techniques that make his sheets so rich and expressive, he developed through hard work and endless experimentation. Rembrandt's etchings still seem exceptionally fresh and modern. They serve as an unsurpassed model for all printmakers. It was Rembrandt who created the modern type of etching.
His sheets are picturesque in the best sense of the word. The main element of Rembrandt's etchings is light; the light burning in the night, breaking through the clouds, sliding on the surface of objects, changing the expression of faces, giving them life and mobility.
In the etching "Jan Six" the light slowly pours through the window, enveloping the face and blond hair of the reader - from the engraving breathes thoughtfulness and concentration. In the famous "Toy Tree" landscape, sunlight struggles with the dark shadows of a receding thunderstorm, a hot stream of light breaks wet clouds, rapidly falls to the ground. The dramatic mood is revealed in the tense contrast of large masses of light and shadow.
In the portrait of the mother, the light gliding across the face, the small shadows conveyed by short strokes, make the face changeable, the expression unstable. It seems that the old woman hides a smile in the corners of her lips, and her eyes squint cunningly. You forget that all this inexhaustible richness of expression is achieved only with strokes.
In the etching "Blind Tobit" objects dissolve in a soft, even light. With a few sparing strokes, Rembrandt only slightly outlines the forms, outlines the most general masses, highlighting the tragic figure of a blind old man, concentrating our attention on his psychology.
Rembrandt does not imitate painting, but achieves a single pictorial impression by purely graphic means. Densely placed cross strokes give a deep shadow, smooth clean lines outlining white pieces of paper convey bright lighting, and small strokes - the play of light in the penumbra. By successive etching, strokes of different thicknesses and depths can be obtained. The contrasting juxtaposition of light and thin lines with coarser and sharper ones was widely used by artists to convey spatial depth, air, softening the outlines of more distant objects.
Two lines can be traced in the etching work of Rembrandt: one is dramatic, tense, vividly picturesque; the other is closed, intimately lyrical, with the utmost laconism of all graphic means.
These two lines, these foundations laid by Rembrandt, developed in the work of later masters.
J. Whistler (1834-1903), an Anglo-American artist, continued the line of purely lined, non-pictorial etching. His small sheets are amazing in their subtlety and some special purity of manner. Whistler said that etching is an intimate art, that the tools of the etcher are so thin and delicate that the work itself should be the same. The etching must be looked at closely, held in hands, it cannot be inserted into a frame and hung on the wall. In accordance with these theories, Whistler's etchings are amazingly thin, delicate in manner, exquisitely simple in technique. Almost always these are landscapes: the river bank, city back streets, old houses.
Whistler created a whole trend in etching - chamber etching, intimate. The Englishman F. Boengwin (1867-1936) opposed this trend. His etchings are not intended for folders and albums. They are huge. Their real place is on the wall. They look good on it, they organize it. This is a kind of murals with etching, in other words, monumental graphics. Brangwyn's etchings are devoted to big themes: the power of nature, the power of human labor. They are full of love for life, the pathos of creativity, they are rude in execution, but in this rudeness itself there is great power.
Both directions have the right to exist. Both are presented in the Soviet graphics. In general, etching has not received a particularly wide distribution in our country. This is mainly due to the fact that it does not allow such mass circulations as are required today. However, the work of a few Soviet etchers is extremely interesting and has brought a lot of new things to this ancient technique.
The most striking figure among the etchers was I. I. Nivinsky (1881-1933). In his monumental sheets, the etching acquired the features of a catchy, laconic poster, built on sharp, contrasting juxtapositions. Particularly interesting are his experiments in the field of color etching. Nivinsky uses a colored contour, color fills of large planes, different depths of etching. His sheets often combine episodes of different time, pieces of the landscape, taken at different scales. The color in the etching helps to combine these different-sized pieces into a single complex composition and at the same time clearly distinguish between them. So, in the sheets from the series "Caucasian Capriccios" colored linings unite the distant Mountain landscape and figures of people in the foreground. And in the famous ZAGES sheet, the panorama of construction is sharply separated in color from the Lenin monument, given in close-up.
In addition to the desire for monumentality, there were other trends in Soviet etching. In the work of M. A. Dobrov (1877-1958), etching is, in the full sense of the word, chamber art, attracting with the subtlety of the work and the thoroughness of the finish.
Ukrainian masters V. F. Mironenko (b. 1910) and V. I. Vikhtinsky (b. 1918) quite unexpectedly applied the complex technique of color etching with aquatint to depict the life of a modern industrial enterprise. This seemingly refined technique made it possible to perfectly convey the ebullient atmosphere of hard work: the reflections of the fire of blast furnaces, clouds of smoke and steam enveloping the machines.
Color etching, like color woodcuts, is printed from several boards. But sometimes it is printed from one board, painted in the colors that should be printed. After each print, the coloring of the board is resumed.
The drypoint technique is usually considered a type of etching, as the artist works with an etching needle. But acid is not used here (hence the name - "dry"), and in essence this technique is closer to engraving with a cutter.
An engraver scratches a design on a copper board. When the needle moves, metal chips are pushed out, which forms a rough comb along the edges of the scratches, the so-called barbs (burrs). They are not cleaned off, the ink is stuffed into them and, when printed, gives a juicy, soft, as if shrouded in mist line. These velvety lines allow for a deep, juicy shadow that seems especially lively and fresh compared to the somewhat angular and dryish nature of the stroke itself. Therefore, artists valued drypoint engraving.
However, the burrs are very fragile and will soon wear off when reprinted, so that only ten to fifteen good prints can be made. So it happened with Rembrandt's famous engraving "Healing of the Sick": a deep velvety shadow, obtained on the first prints from cross strokes with burrs, became pale and transparent on subsequent prints. Therefore, the first, successful prints were especially valued. Once for such a print they gave a huge amount - 100 guilders, and in the history of art he received the name "Leaf of a hundred guilders". 125 years after Rembrandt's death, the worn board fell into the hands of the English engraver Bailey. He carefully refurbished it, printed a few more prints, and then sawed the Rembrandt board so that no one could produce bad prints that distort the great artist's intention.
Contemporary artists often work with drypoint, sometimes combining it with etching. Usually the whole drawing is etched, and with a dry needle the artist refines individual details, deepens the shadows, and enhances certain lines. This refinement gives the engraving greater clarity and certainty.
Of the Russian artists, V. A. Serov (1865-1911) was a virtuoso with a dry needle. His few graphic works are impeccably elegant and at the same time simple and masculine. His laconicism is amazing: with one precisely found line, he was able to convey the shape of an object, space, light.
The exact opposite of drypoint is the etching technique with soft varnish. The stroke of a dry needle is very sharp, harsh and defined. Soft varnish, on the contrary, gives a free, somewhat loose stroke, reminiscent of a charcoal drawing. On a zinc plate coated with varnish, which includes lard, put a piece of paper and draw on it, pressing hard with a pencil. When the paper is removed, varnish sticks on its reverse side in places touched by a pencil. The spaces thus vacated on the board are etched with acid. When printed, a grainy stroke is obtained, very soft and picturesque. The artist can never fully foresee the exact effect that will occur when etching soft varnish. There is always some element of chance in this technique. Therefore, only very experienced artists use soft varnish, who are able to take into account this accident and put it at their service.
E. S. Kruglikova (1865-1941) was a brilliant master of this technique. In her works, artistry and impeccable mastery of technique are combined with the ease of improvisation and the unexpectedness of artistic effects.
However, with all the attractive sides and rich possibilities of engraving, etching and drypoint, they all have one significant drawback: these techniques are purely linear, the main expressive means in them is a stroke. They cannot give a picturesque spot and soft tonal transitions.
In 1768, the French artist J. B. Lepoens (1734-1781) invented a new engraving technique to overcome this shortcoming. This method, called aquatint, was originally used for watercolor reproduction.
The word "aquatint" means water-based paint; this technique allows you to convey a light spot, characteristic of watercolor or ink drawing. A copper board, on which a linear pattern has been previously etched, is placed in a special box with a door. Then they take some resinous powder (most often rosin) and blow it into a cloud in the same box (using bellows or otherwise). The door is closed. The powder is evenly deposited on the copper surface, and in order for it to stick, the board is slightly heated. When the whole board is covered with tiny powders, it is placed in acid. Resinous powders are not affected by acid, and it eats away only small gaps between them. After some time, the artist covers with acid-resistant varnish all those places and details that should be lighter, and again lowers the board into acid. In open places, acid will corrode copper more strongly, and it will clog here more paint. Fine-grained spots of varying intensity will appear on the print, resembling a brush drawing.
The great Spanish artist F. Goya (1746-1828) used aquatint in his series of engravings "Caprichos" ("Caprices"), full of evil mockery of high society. It is curious that the artist donated the boards and the entire print run to King Charles IV. The gift was given through a minister, who is ridiculed in many of the sheets in this series. But, as Goya expected, neither the king nor the nobleman understood the caustic hints, and accusatory drawings were distributed throughout Spain.
Aquatint is used almost exclusively in combination with etching, the outline is made with a stroke, and spots and halftones are given by aquatint. Goya's sheet "The Unfortunate Mother" (from the "Disasters of War" series) uses these techniques surprisingly subtly. A solid dark spot conveys the looming menacing night sky with the glow of a fire on the horizon. With a few energetic strokes, the figures of people carrying away the corpse of a woman, and a little girl mournfully following them, are outlined. Her figure seems especially helpless and tiny against the background of a huge dark sky. A feeling of hopeless loneliness pervades this engraving. The sheet "What courage" from the same series has a completely different character. Here is an episode from the heroic defense of Zaragoza during the Napoleonic invasion. The girl Maria Agostina brought shells to the defenders of the city, and when all the soldiers died, she herself stood up to the gun and continued to shoot at the enemy alone. A slender girlish figure is drawn in a clear silhouette against the sky, it acquires a special monumentality and plasticity due to the skillful combination of spot and line.
F. Goya. Unhappy mother. From the Disasters of War series. 1808-1814. Etching with aquatint
In the work of Goya, aquatint from a reproduction technique becomes the strongest means of expression. Picturesque spots of aquatint enhance the expression of the sheet, give it wholeness and generality, highlight the main thing.
Modern artists often turn to aquatint when they need to soften the sharpness of a line etching. Instead of rosin, other substances are also used, in particular, sugar. Such a "sugar aquatint" was made, for example, by P. Picasso, his illustrations for the poems of the Spanish poet Gongora.
A. Matisse (1869-1954) used aquatint in a peculiar way. He painted with acid on aquatint granular ground. The acid ate through these lines of the drawing, and when printed, a grainy stroke was obtained, reminiscent of soft varnish, but lighter and more transparent. In general, acid painting directly on the board is often used in etching. This method is called lavis and is used to lay the lightest shadows and nuances. It gives the engraving a watercolor painting and transparency. Acid in such cases is applied with a special glass fiber brush.
In the 18th century, many collectors appeared who collected drawings by famous artists. But since each drawing exists in only one copy, only one collector can get it, while the rest of the collections turn out to be incomplete. In 1740, the French engraver François invented a special engraving technique for fully reproducing drawings made with charcoal and sanguine. This technique is called pencil or dotted because the copper board is covered with tiny dots. For this, two tools are used: a tape measure-wheel with sharp teeth and a matuar - a rod with a thickened end equipped with spikes. The board is varnished, as in etching, and is also subjected to etching in acid. Where the dots have been planted more densely, darker places are obtained on the print, and thus, by thickening and thinning the dots, subtle tonal transitions can be achieved. In addition, not the entire sheet can be filled with dots, but a tape measure can be drawn along the lines of the drawing. With this technique (which, in fact, is called the pencil style), the loose stroke characteristic of charcoal drawing is well transmitted.
The best master of the dotted line was F. Bartolozzi (1727-1815), an Italian who settled in London. Many young artists studied in his studio. Among them was one Russian serf (F. Stepanov), who had run away from his master. Particularly famous was another Russian student of Bartolozzi - G. I. Skorodumov (1755-1792), sent abroad to improve the art of engraving with a chisel. He learned the art of Bartolozzi and mastered the new technique so well that he soon became one of the most popular engravers in London, almost more popular than Bartolozzi himself. Skorodumov lived in London for ten years, and English art critics willingly rank him among the school of English dotted painters.
It so happened that in England the technique of the dotted line developed, and in France - the pencil style (which is the same dotted line, but without its regularity). The English stipplers, in their small, elegant sheets, reproduced the paintings of fashionable salon painters. The subtle gradation of tones characteristic of the dotted line was the best suited for the reproduction of this sugary, like porcelain painting. French engravers made magnificent reproductions of drawings. They were most interested in conveying the specifics of a particular type of drawing - sanguine, Italian pencil, etc.
Both the dotted line and the pencil style ceased to exist already in the 18th century, when the fashion for small reproductions passed.
More durable was another reproduction technique - mezzotint. This technique was invented in Germany at the beginning of the 17th century by the amateur engraver Siegen, but became widespread in England at the end of the 18th century and is the glory of England in the history of engraving.
This technique is very complex and labor intensive. The copper board is pre-treated with a "rocking chair" - a tool that looks like a spatula with a serrated edge. It is held at right angles to the surface of the board and wobbled evenly until a uniformly scratched surface is obtained. The print printed from such a board will be a deep black tone. It takes about 20 hours to pre-process a small plate. When the board is processed in this way, the engraver with a steel trowel begins to gradually smooth out the design, moving from dark to light. The smoother the surface of the board, the less ink will linger on it, and when printed, this part will be lighter. The absence of lines, exceptional depth and velvety tone allow, with careful nuances, to achieve a soft gradation of tones.
Mezzotint is perhaps the most time-consuming of all engraving techniques. Its circulation is small - you can get only fifteen or twenty good prints. But the resulting effect justifies the effort, a good mezzotint print is literally a jewel. To this should be added the thoroughness of the work of the English masters. The engraver Watson, for example, put aside a not entirely successful board and started work from the very beginning in order to avoid corrections and not to release imperfect sheets.
In the mezzotint technique, color printing in the modern sense of the word was first used. Engraving on metal was often done in color, but in a completely peculiar way. The board was painted, the paint was applied to it with a special swab; such a board gives only one print, for each next it must be painted again. This greatly complicated the process of printing, although it made it possible to give very subtle color transitions (such, for example, are the engravings of the Russian master I. Selivanov).
At the beginning of the 18th century, Le Blon (1667-1741) invented a method for printing colorful sheets from three boards. It was based on I. Newton's theory of colors, according to which any color can be obtained from a different combination of the three primary colors - blue, red and yellow. The artist's first experiments date back to 1704. These are huge mezzotint sheets, rather rough in color. Le Blond's method was not successful. The artist is broke. The witty inventor, who allowed modern three-color printing in principle hundreds of years before us, was forced to flee to France. But here, too, he failed. There were no good mezzotint engravers in France, and since Le Blond's method was based on this technique, it was naturally difficult for the inventor to continue his experience. His method of color printing only became widespread after the invention of the aquatint. The color aquatint of French artists of the 18th century (J.-F. Janinet, L.-F. Debucourt) is one of the brilliant pages in the history of engraving. It was printed from several boards (often more than three) and at the same time achieved completely unusual subtle and delicate overflows of color, not inferior to the transparency and tenderness of watercolor. It is no coincidence that almost all of these engravings are reproductions from watercolors.
The art of colored metal engraving was almost lost in the 19th century. Only at the end of the 19th century does its revival begin. This new attention to technology, as if dead and forgotten, is explained by the special interest in color among the artists of this time, in particular, among the Impressionists. Particularly interesting in this area are the works of Russians and Soviet artists- Kruglikova, Falileev, Dobrov, Nivinsky.
All techniques of engraving - both convex and recessed - had to eventually retreat before lithography.
Lithography, a flat-printing technique, was invented at the end of the 18th century. It was discovered by Alois Senefelder (1771-1834), a native of Prague, whose family moved to Munich when the boy was 8 years old. After the death of his father, young Senefelder, who was then 21 years old, found himself in extreme poverty. He tried to make his way in life: he became an actor, tried to write plays and music. This activity of the young favorite of the Muses did not have any success with the public. He turned out to be a bad actor, and no one published his plays. He tried to find a cheap way to print his works. The case gave him the idea to use the Zolengof limestone for engraving and printing music. In 1797, he printed a romance with a vignette depicting a burning house - the first drawing made using the lithography method.
Zenefelder established the physical and chemical properties of the substances used in lithography. He developed all those varieties of this rich technique, which are used almost without change today.
The lithography technique is based on the mutual repulsion of fat and water. Zolengof limestone slate has the ability to accept greasy paint well, and where it is treated with slightly oxidized water with glue, it repels paint. The artist draws a drawing on the stone with a lithographic pencil (which includes lard) or with an equally greasy lithographic ink. The fatty substance of a pencil or ink, having penetrated into the pores of the stone and tightly adhering to its surface, repels oxidized water, which is poured over the stone. When ordinary printing ink is rolled onto a stone treated in this way, it is not accepted by the parts doused with water, but sticks only in those places where the image was applied.
Lithography produces an almost infinite number of prints. This technique, simple in execution, varied in the effects obtained, opened up enormous opportunities for artists. However, during the life of Senefelder, it did not receive distribution. Despite the fact that the inventor knew everything - working with a pencil, pen and brush, scratching a spot made with ink - and despite the extraordinary energy with which he tried to implement his invention, he died in poverty and unrecognized. A few years after his death, lithography began its triumphal march through Europe. All artists tried their hand at this technique. Lithographic reproductions were made from paintings, portraits were printed, views of something remarkable areas. Engaged in lithography and amateurs. And most importantly, lithography began to be used in the newspaper.
The newspapers of the early 19th century were not like ours. They were somewhat smaller in size, each issue contained only one illustration, which occupied a whole page. Photography had not yet been invented, so all the illustrations were made by artists using the lithography technique. The newspapers printed their works so wonderful french artists, like O. Daumier, P. Gavarni, T. Steinlen.
O. Daumier (1808-1879) owns about four thousand lithographs on a variety of topics - from sharp political cartoons to humorous scenes. For his cartoons, Daumier was subjected to political persecution, even went to prison. However, his lithographs invariably appeared in almost every issue of the Caricature and Sharivari newspapers. Sometimes censorship did not allow them to be placed in the newspaper, and then they were exhibited in the window of a bookstore, and a large crowd of admiring spectators immediately gathered around this window.
Daumier worked very quickly, sometimes he managed to make a caricature in one night so that the newspaper would have the most recent, burning material. Thus, the famous lithograph "Transnonen Street", which depicts a worker's family brutally murdered by soldiers of government troops during a popular uprising in 1834, appeared on the day after this event. The soldiers broke into the house and killed all its inhabitants only because someone was shooting from the house. Daumier visited the scene of the crime, and his lithograph is a formidable eyewitness account accusing the government of cruelty and arbitrariness.
Daumier's caricatures of King Louis Philippe and his ministers, which he placed on the pages of the Caricature newspaper, caused political repression against this newspaper. In 1834 it was closed.
After the closure of Caricature, Daumier was deprived of the opportunity to study political satire. However, his everyday cartoons are not just funny humorous scenes and anecdotes, in which Daumier gave a devastating description of the French philistinism, these "good bourgeois", hiding behind a fine appearance stupidity, narrow-mindedness, an all-consuming thirst for profit. Daumier's work is an artistic chronicle of France for 40 years.
Daumier worked almost exclusively with a lithographic pencil directly on the stone, without preparatory drawings. He skillfully used all the possibilities of this technique. Daumier's early lithographs are juicy, picturesque, built on contrasts of velvet-black and silver-gray tones. His later works are not so carefully designed and resemble a living pencil sketch, directly conveying the impression of nature.
Daumier's traditions were continued in the work of T. Steinlen (1859-1923). All his lithographs were published in magazines and newspapers. He collaborated in the late 90s in a small newspaper called "Leaf". It was really a sheet - one small page, on one side of which a drawing was placed, and on the other - text. The text was of the most radical, topical nature, and the drawing gave it a visual embodiment.
Steinlen's lithographs are easily perceived and remembered. He always strives to highlight the main thing, omitting random details. The broad, catchy manner of Steinlen's lithographs, in which everything secondary is given only a hint, is the best suited for mass printed graphics, designed for instant perception, in order to immediately attract the reader's attention.
The lithograph by Daumier, Gavarni, Steinlen is a monochrome lithograph, sometimes resembling a pencil drawing, sometimes made in ink with scratching. If they wanted to introduce color into the lithograph, then each print had to be colored by hand. Later, color lithography was invented, printed from several stones. The first color lithographs appeared in Russia in the 40s of the last century. In 1846, I. Shchedrovsky's album was published with genre scenes from folk life. They were printed from three stones. In Europe, the first color lithograph was made by E. Manet in 1873.
The greatest master of color lithography was A. Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). He masterfully used all the possibilities of this rich technology. Light pencil drawing, transparent pen strokes, even ink fills are often combined in one sheet. Toulouse-Lautrec came up with another witty trick - to sprinkle lithographic ink on the stone (for this he used an ordinary toothbrush). This simple technique gave a new effect, somewhat reminiscent of aquatint.
At the end of the 19th century, posters began to be made using the technique of lithography. Huge lithographs, pasted on the walls of houses, caught the eye with bold colorful combinations, enlivened the city landscape.
The first poster artist was J. Cheret - a self-taught artist, in the past a printing worker. He found a way to combine color lithography with color typographic printing, which allowed him to increase the size of the sheet: his posters sometimes reach three meters in length. (The largest lithograph is Steinlen's poster "Street" - about 7 meters.) Cheret, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec - these are classics of a kind of poster art, which is a bright page of French graphics.
Lithography takes pride of place in Soviet graphics. Of course, now it is not used in newspapers or posters. But during the war, Leningrad artists created a special genre of lithographic posters. Small-sized sheets of the "Combat Pencil" glorified the exploits of the heroes Patriotic War, exposed the bestial essence of fascism.
The largest graphic artists of Leningrad - Yu. N. Petrov (1904-1943), N. A. Tyrsa (1887-1942), I. S. Astapov (b. 1905), V. I. Kurdov (b. . 1905), N. M. Kochergin (born 1897). It was an effective, authentic martial art. Many of these artists fought at the front with weapons in their hands, some died. "Combat Pencil" came out continuously during the difficult and heroic days of the siege of Leningrad. However, despite the glorious activity of the "Combat Pencil", lithography in the poster was not widely used.
In Soviet art, lithography is a print and, to some extent, a book illustration (1920s-1930s).
Unfortunately, in last years lithography is almost never used in the book. The development of photomechanical methods of reproduction (mainly offset) brought to naught the good tradition of introducing original lithography into the book.
There is no doubt that lithography is less decorative, less connected with type than woodcut; its technology is much more complex. However, the softness and juiciness of the lithographic touch makes a pleasant contrast with the set, introducing into the book the unique freshness of the original, made by the artist himself.
The work of V. Lebedev (born 1891), V. Konashevich (born 1888), K. Rudakov (1891-1949), E. Kibrik (born 1906) clearly and convincingly shows that lithography can also organically enter a book like a woodcut. It is difficult for us now to imagine the heroes of Maupassant differently than Rudakov depicted them in his soft, air-filled lithographs. We feel the poetry of the 18th century exactly as Konashevich conveyed it to us in the illustrations for Manon Lescaut.
Lithography, due to its specificity, opens up more opportunities for conveying the historical situation, various everyday details, and the psychology of the characters.
In this regard, it is interesting to compare the lithographic illustrations by E. Kibrik for De Coster's novel "Til Ulenspiegel" with the illustrations by F. Konstantinov for the same novel, made using the woodcut technique.
Konstantinov conveys the general romantic structure of the novel, seeks to reveal the poetic style of De Coster, carried away by the originality of folk legends. These traditions are processed by De Coster from the point of view of a man of the 19th century. Konstantinov's illustrations are interpreted in the same spirit - they recreate the atmosphere of the novel, and not a specific historical reality. Kibrik in the illustrations for "Til Ulenspiegel" takes us directly to the historical era described in the novel. History lives in his lithographs, we breathe its air, forgetting that the novel was written relatively recently. The heroes of the novel even seem more alive than De Coster portrayed them.
E. Kibrik. Lasochka. Illustration for "Cola Breugnon" by R. Rolland. 1935. Lithography
Kibrik's best work is the lithographs for "Cola Breugnon". The images of Kol, Lasochka, the cheerful, good-natured curate, the scenes of the national holiday are distinguished by a deep penetration into the spirit of the French people with their cheerfulness, slyness, humor and vitality. Romain Rolland highly appreciated these lithographs by Kibrik.
Lebedev, Charushin, Tyrsa created a special type of book - smart, colorful, with bright drawings, freely located on the sheet. All the richness of the possibilities of color lithography manifested itself in these books especially clearly.
Lithography is soft and plastic. The loose pencil stroke, fills and shadings convey volume well, a subtle play of penumbra and reflexes. Lithography is picturesque - it can give both juicy contrasts of bright, sonorous tones, and the finest color nuances.
Therefore, lithography has found especially wide application in printmaking.
Back in the 1930s, Leningrad artists began a great deal of creating Soviet prints of mass, highly artistic easel graphics, which were printed in huge numbers. At this time, such masterpieces of color lithography appeared as still lifes by N. A. Tyrsa, prints by E. I. Charushin (born 1901), portraits by G. S. Vereisky (1886-1962).
Traditions established in the 1930s have been continued in art contemporary masters prints of Moscow and Leningrad. Their works, fresh, joyful, interesting, really decorate our life.
The engraving possibilities are endless. The ways of using it are extremely diverse, up to the most unexpected. Hardly everyone knows that postage stamps, matchbox labels or banknotes are sometimes different types of engraving. But these applied works, of course, do not exhaust the entire significance of engraving. Engraving is a great art with a subtle and flexible artistic language, with a rich supply of expressive means.
Artists are attracted to engraving by its laconicism and clarity, its very difficulty, which does not allow anything approximate and inaccurate. "I appreciate in the engraving its incredible conciseness and brevity of expression, its taciturnity and, due to this, sharp expressiveness. I appreciate the certainty and clarity of its lines," wrote Ostroumova-Lebedeva.
Today, engraving has not lost its significance. On the contrary, it is becoming more and more popular. A wide variety of types and techniques of engraving are being developed, including such complex ones as color etching, aquatint, and edged woodcut engraving.
Engraving is done not only by artists of Moscow and Leningrad, but also by the Union republics. Woodcut and color etching in Ukraine, lithography in Latvia, and etching in Estonia reached a high artistic level. Bright and significant works are created by the masters of Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan. Lithuanian woodcuts are extremely interesting, which combines the traditions folk art with a keen sense of modernity.
Engraving is the most widespread type of fine art. With it, genuine great art enters our everyday life, accessible to literally everyone. Our ancestors understood this well. Ancient popular prints, English classical mezzotints, Japanese engravings of the 18th-19th centuries served as a good decoration for the interior. They could be seen on the walls of any house, they were an integral part of everyday life, its decoration.
And now, when the aesthetic needs of the people have grown so colossally, the engraving must replace the bad copies and reproductions, which, unfortunately, still "decorate" our public buildings and dwellings. An elegant book with engravings, a beautiful print that looks so good on the wall of a modern interior, bring real art, a genuine aesthetic experience into the life around us.
And the fact that this art is cheap, that it is available to everyone and everyone, only increases its value. Engraving is a wonderful tool for the aesthetic education of the masses, a deeply democratic art, and therefore modern.
a drawing carved or etched by an engraver on a smooth surface of some hard material (metal, wood, linoleum, etc.), as well as an imprint of such a drawing on paper.
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ENGRAVING
(fr. Gravure - cut) - a type of graphics, in which the image is a printed print of a relief pattern applied to the board by an engraver. A feature of the engraving is the possibility of its replication: a large number of multi-colored prints (prints) can be printed from one board engraved by the artist. All of them will be author's works, unlike the drawing, which exists only in the singular. The main stages of engraving execution include translation preparatory drawing from paper to board surface, engraving and printing. According to the nature of the processing of the printed form (board) and the method of printing, convex and in-depth engravings are distinguished. Processing engraving board is as follows. On a well-polished surface of a hardwood board (pear, palm, boxwood), a drawing is applied with a pencil, pen or brush, then the engraver removes the places that should be white with a graver, leaving strokes and black spots. It turns out a convex image, paint is rolled onto it with a roller and, having applied paper, press it down with force on the machine or grind it by hand. Convex prints include woodcuts (woodcuts) and linocuts (linoleum prints). In in-depth engraving, the drawing is deepened with a chisel or acid in a metal plate (made of copper, steel or zinc), the paint is hammered into the recesses with a swab, the surface of the board is wiped clean and moistened paper is applied to it. Prints are printed on the machine with strong pressure, necessary for the paper to be pressed into the recess and reproduce the pattern. In-depth engraving includes engraving, etching, aquantine, lavis, soft varnish, etc. According to its purpose, engraving is divided into easel engraving (estami), that is, designed for independent existence, and book engraving. There are also various types of applied engravings, ex-libris, popular prints, etc.
History of engraving
Here is a description of the word "Engraving" from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia: engraving(from French gravure), 1) a printed impression on paper (or on similar material) from a plate (“board”) on which a drawing is cut; 2) a type of graphic art, including various methods of manual processing of boards (engraving) and printing prints from them. Depending on which parts of the board are covered with paint during printing, convex and in-depth engravings are distinguished: engraving also includes lithography (“flat engraving”).
The emergence of engraving is associated with crafts where engraving processes were used: woodcut - with carving, including on boards for heels, engraving - with jewelry, etching - with decoration of weapons. Paper - a material for impressions - appeared at the beginning of our era in China (where engraving is mentioned from the 6th-7th centuries, and the first dated engraving dates back to 868), and in Europe in the Middle Ages. The first European woodcuts of religious content, often hand-painted, appeared at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries. in Alsace, Bavaria, Bohemia, Austria ("St. Christopher", dated 1423); then satirical and allegorical sheets, alphabets, calendars were performed in this technique. Around 1430, "block" ("woodcut") books arose, for which the image and text were cut out on one board. About 1461 the first type-setting book was printed, illustrated with woodcuts; such books were printed in Cologne, Maipz, Bamberg, Ulm, Nuremberg, Basel; in France, hour books were often illustrated with raised engravings on metal. German and French engravings of the 15th century were distinguished by their decorativeness, contrasts of black and white, underlined contours, Gothic fragility of the stroke. By the end of the 15th century, two directions of book engraving had developed in Italy: in Florence, an interest in ornament played a significant role, while Venice and Verona gravitated towards the clarity of lines, the three-dimensionality of space, and the plastic monumentality of figures.
Carving engraving originated in the 1440s. in Southern Germany or Switzerland ("Master playing cards"). In the 15th century German anonymous masters and M. Schongauer used thin parallel shading, gentle modeling of chiaroscuro. In Italy, A. Pollaiolo and A. Mantegna used parallel and cross hatching, achieving volume, sculptural forms, and heroic monumentality of images. A. Durer completed the quest of the Renaissance masters, combining the virtuoso subtlety of the stroke characteristic of German engraving with the plastic activity of images inherent in Italians, filled with deep philosophical meaning; drama and lyrics, heroic and genre motifs appeared in woodcuts based on his drawings. Engraving served as a weapon of acute social struggle in Germany (“flying sheets”) and the Netherlands (engravings of the circle of P. Brueghel the Elder).
At the beginning of the 16th century, reproduction engraving with a chisel was born in Italy, reproducing painting (M. Raimondi); as a reaction to its impersonal smooth hatching, clearly revealing the form, etching developed with its freedom of stroke, emotionality, picturesqueness, the struggle of light and shadow (A. Dürer, A. Altdorfer in Germany, W. Graf in Switzerland, Parmigianino in Italy) and “ chiaroscuro "- color woodcut with a generalized molding of the form, close shades of tone (U. da Carpi, D. Beccafumi, A. da Trento in Italy, L. Cranach, H. Burgkmair, H. Baldung Green in Germany). The incisor engravings by the Netherlander Luke of Leyden and the Frenchman J. Duve stood out for their freedom and sometimes dramatic design. In the 16th century book woodcuts appear in the Czech Republic, Russia, Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine in connection with publishing Francysk Skaryna, Ivan Fedorov, Pyotr Mstislavets and others.
In the photo: an engraved copper plate for engraving, mounted on a wooden base.
In the 17th century, reproduction engraving with a chisel dominated (in Flanders, P. Soutman, L. Vorsterman, and P. Pontius, who reproduced the paintings of P. P. Rubens; in France, C. Melland, R. Nanteuil, and other masters of portrait engraving, distinguished in the best examples of the subtlety of understanding the characters, the purity of the linear style) and etching, in which the diversity of individual searches was widely manifested - an acutely grotesque perception of the variegation and contradictions of modern life by the Lorraine master J. Callot, the interaction of light and atmosphere in the classic landscapes of the Frenchman C. Lorrain and in pastoral scenes of the Italian J. B. Castiglione, the immediacy of perception of psychological states in the portraits of the Fleming A. van Dyck. The most integral was the Dutch school of etching (not inferior to painting in value), which is characterized by an intimate sense of life and nature, a small format, a calculation for looking close, the subtlety of chiaroscuro, picturesque composition, a clear division of genres (animal etchings by P. Potter, genre - A van Ostade, landscape - A. van Everdingen, etc.). A special place belongs to the landscape etchings of H. Seghers, who expressed the dramatic feeling of the gigantic scale of the world, and J. Ruisdael, who conveyed the heroic spirit of wild nature, and especially the etchings of Rembrandt, in which the free dynamics of the stroke, the movement of light and shadow express both the psychological formation of characters and the rise spiritual creative energy, and the conflict of ethical principles. In the 17th century Engraving on metal, sometimes with realistic motifs, spread in Russia (S. Ushakov, A. Trukhmensky, L. Bunin), Ukraine (A. and L. Tarasevichi, I. Shchirsky), and Belarus (M. Voshchanka). From the end of the 17th century Russian lubok developed.
The engraving of the 18th century is characterized by an abundance of reproduction techniques: to reproduce painting and drawing, chisel engraving is masterfully used (P. Dreve in France, G. Volpato and R. Morgen in Italy), often with etching preparation (N. Cochin, F. Boucher in France, Engraving by F. Schmidt in Germany); invented in the 17th century mezzotint tone engraving (portrait engravings by the English masters J. R. Smith, V. Green, landscape engravings by R. Irlom) and new tone techniques - dotted line (F. Bartolozzi in England), aquatint (J. B. Leprince in France) , lavis (J. Ch. Francois in France), pencil style (J. Demarto, L. M. Bonnet in France); The brilliant masters of color aquatint were the Frenchmen F. Janinet, Ch. M. Decourty, and especially L. F. Debucourt. The original etching was distinguished by softness, fluidity of lines, subtle play of light (A. Watteau, O. Fragonard, Engraving de Saint-Aubin in France, J. B. Tiepolo, A. Canaletto in Italy). Etching and chisels were used to create satirical sheets by W. Hogarth (England), genre miniatures, including book ones, by D. N. Khodovetsky (Germany), grandiose architectural fantasies by J. B. Piranesi (Italy). Engraving was used in books and albums, as interior decoration and as a form of artistic journalism (etchings by English cartoonists - J. Gillray, T. Rowlandson; popular prints of the Great french revolution). In Russia in the first half of the 18th century. chisel engraved patriotic allegories, battle scenes, portraits, city views (A. F. Zubov, I. A. Sokolov, M. I. Makhaev); in the second half of the 18th - early 19th centuries. masters of portrait (E. P. Chemesov, N. I. Utkin), landscape and book (S. F. Galaktionov, A. Gravyura Ukhtomsky, K. V. and I. V. Chesky) came to the fore, engraving, dotted (Engraving I Skorodumov), mezzotint (I. A. Selivanov), lavis (N. A. Lvov, A. N. Olenin); architects (V. I. Bazhenov, M. F. Kazakov, J. Thomas de Thomon), sculptors and painters (M. I. Kozlovsky, O. A. Kiprensky), the first Russian caricaturists (A. Engraving Venetsianov, I. I. Terebenev, I. A. Ivanov).
In the 18th century, Japanese woodcuts flourished, the first impulses of which were received from China (where illustrations, albums, popular prints, and, from the 16th century, colored woodcuts, were distributed). In the 17th century, illustrated books (“Ise-monogatari”, 1608), engraved calendars, guidebooks, posters, greeting cards (“surimono”) appeared in Japan, and from the 1660s. - secular prints associated with democratic art school Ukiyo-e. Japanese engraving, carried out successively by a draftsman (author of an engraving), a carver and a printer, is rich in poetic associations, symbols, and metaphors. Hisikawa Moronobu produced the first black-and-white prints of beauties and street scenes, using energetic silhouettes, decorative lines and spots. In the 18th century, Okumura Masanobu introduced 2-3-color printing, and Suzuki Harunobu, in his multi-color engravings with a few figures of girls and children, embodied the subtlest shades of feeling with the help of exquisite halftones and richness of rhythms. The largest masters of the late 18th century are Kitagawa Utamaro, who created a type of lyrical ideal female portrait with a planar composition, unexpected angles, bold framing, with a subtle play of smooth thin lines, soft shades of color and black spots, and Choshusai Syaraku, whose grotesquely sharp, expressive and dramatic the portraits of the actors are distinguished by the intense contrast of rhythm and color, the embodiment of the character-symbol. In the first half of the 19th century, the leading role was played by the masters of landscape engraving - Katsushika Hokusai, who expressed with extraordinary freedom of imagination the complexity, variability, inexhaustibility of nature, the unity of the world in big and small, and Ando Hiroshige, who sought to accurately capture the beauty of his country.
At the turn of the 19th century, F. Goya (Spain) in his series of etchings with aquatint opened up new ways of engraving, combining political satire and almost documentary accuracy with subjective expression, tragic grotesque and irresistible imagination. The combination of vital persuasiveness and fantasticness is also inherent in the convex engraving on copper by W. Blake (England). In the 19th century, reproduction woodcut engraving prevailed (invented in the 1780s by the Englishman T. Buick), carried out by specialist carvers (in Russia - E. E. Bernardsky, L. A. Seryakov, V. V. Mate) for line and then tone illustrations (“polytypes”) in a book and magazine. Of lesser importance were reproduction engravings with a chisel (in Russia, F. I. Jordan, I. P. Pozhalostin) and etching (in France, F. Braquemont). In the revival of the original etching, the role of many painters who sought to spread their artistic ideas, and often looking for a way to capture the living variability of nature, the play of light and air (J.F. Millet, C. Corot, C.F. Daubigny in France, T. Gravura Shevchenko and L.M. Zhemchuzhnikov in Ukraine, I.I. Shishkin, I. E. Repin, V. A. Serov in Russia). Etching attracted the possibility of an impressionistic plein air and the transfer of instant impressions (Dutch J. B. Jongkind, French E. Manet, E. Degas, American artists J. M. Whistler, J. Pennel, German - M. Lieberman, L. Corinth, M Slevogt, Swede A. Zorn). At the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. social and philosophical content was introduced into their etching compositions by both symbolists (J. Ensor and J. de Breuker in Belgium, M. Klinger in Germany) and representatives of democratic realism (the cycles of K. Kollwitz imbued with the spirit of revolutionary protest in Germany, etchings by the Englishman F Brangwyn on topics working life cities). Since the 1890s the original (including edged) woodcuts were also revived - easel (O. Leper in France) and book (W. Morris in Great Britain). New paths were outlined by the engravings of P. Gauguin (France), with their generalization, expressive contrasts of white and black; later, a type of decorative-simplified, built on the rhythmic game of silhouettes of woodcuts and linocuts, including color (F. Vallotton in Switzerland, W. Nicholson, Craig in Great Britain, A. P. Ostroumova-Lebedev in Russia) developed; characteristic of many artists of the 20th century. intense expression, tragic contrast of spots (as if signs of an object or figure) in an edged engraving with its vibrating board texture (E. Munch in Norway, E. Nolde, E. L. Kirchner in Germany). The tradition of ancient folk engraving was also widely used (H. Posada in Mexico, V. Skochilyas, T. Kulisevich in Poland). Woodcuts and linocuts of the 20th century gain wealth expressive possibilities in depicting people's life, journalistic passion in promoting liberation ideas, in protest against imperialist oppression and wars (K. Kollwitz, Belgian F. Mazerel, Mexican engravers L. Mendez, A. Beltran, A. Garcia Bustos, Chinese - Li Hua, Gu Yuan, Japanese - Ueno Makoto, Tadashige Ono, Brazilians R. Katz, K. Skliar, Chilean K. Hermosilla Alvarez). The expressiveness of lines, silhouette and color was revealed in a new way in book engravings and prints by P. Picasso, A. Matisse, R. Dufy, J. Rouault. Among the major modern masters of realistic engraving are R. Kent (USA), A. Grant (Great Britain), L. Norman (Sweden), H. Finne (Norway). Technique (especially engravings on metal) was significantly enriched, new materials and technical methods of engraving were introduced.
In 1798, the German Johann Senefelder invented a completely new way of printing - lithography. Prints are made by transferring ink under pressure from a printing plate (lithographic stone) onto paper. The image is applied to the stone with oily ink or a lithographic pencil. Moreover, the circulation with this method of printing could, in terms of the number of prints, many times exceed all the methods of printing images that existed at that time. The first workshop using the lithography method was opened in 1806 in Munich. In Russia, the experience of color lithographic printing from several stones (chromolithography) was tested by I. Shchedrovsky, who published Scenes from Russian Folk Life in 1845.
A method for reproducing multi-color images was also invented - chromolithograph, in which for each paint a separate printing plate is made by hand on a stone (or zinc plate); an outline is preliminarily applied to the surface of each stone. In a print, it is possible to overlay one ink on another with the formation of intermediate color tones. Later, chromolithography was superseded by photomechanical platemaking processes.
An example of printing a chromolithograph from nine lithographic stones in different colors.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the term photogravure(phototype, light type, etc.), for the general public, conceptually ranked Newest technologies graphic production printing to traditional methods of creating engravings, but technologically radically different from them.
Soviet engraving reflected the life and history of the people in many ways, achieving great success in various types and genres - in printmaking and books, in revolutionary journalism and lyrical landscape, in portraiture and thematic composition. She is distinguished by wealth national schools and creative directions, united general principles communist ideology and socialist realism.
The online store site sells vintage engravings in baguette frames. Each of our engravings is unique and worthy of becoming not only an excellent decoration for your interior, but also your family heirloom. Any antique sheet, which depicts a magnificent rare engraving, reveals the secrets of its historical era, the eternally young past, filled with the mysterious charisma of "long gone days."
In our store you can buy not only an old engraving, but also an antique map or a book - rare original gifts, fascinating collectibles and the most suitable objects for a profitable investment. Our engravings cover almost the entire history of printing: these are examples of engravings, and etchings, and aquatints, and lithographs, and heliogravures ... In our catalogs you will also find the rarest old books, first printed sheets of the 15th - 16th centuries, manuscripts.
All product groups are placed in separate catalogs, which are easy and convenient to browse: you can familiarize yourself with our assortment by lining up old engravings of a particular subject by date of origin and price. Welcome to the vintage print shop!
Literature: Rovinsky D. A., A detailed dictionary of Russian engravers of the 16th-19th centuries, vol. 1-2, St. Petersburg, 1895-99; Kristeller P., History of European engraving, trans. from German., M. - L., 1939; Essays on the history and technique of engraving, M., 1941: Russian engraving of the 16th-19th centuries, L. - M., 1950; Sidorov A. A., Old Russian book engraving, M. - L., 1951; Turova V.V., What is an engraving, M., 1963; Japanese engraving, M., 1963: Leontiev Engraving K., Dear search, M. - L., 1965; Deiteil L., Le peintre graveur illustre, v. 1-30, P., 1906-30; Hillier J., Japanese masters of the color print, L., 1954; Laran J., L "estampe. v. 1-2, P., 1959; Bersier J. E., La gravure, P., 1963; Hind A. M., An introduction to a history of woodcut, v. 1-2, Boston - L., 1963; his own, A history of engraving and etching..., N. Y., 1963: Les plus beiles gravures du monde occidental 1410-1914, P., 1966; Adhemar J., La gravure originale au XX siecle , P., 1967. E. S. Levitin, Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
French - cut) - a type of graphic art in which the image is a printed print from a board or plate, on which an in-depth drawing was applied using cutters.
A distinction is made between convex engraving, when the paint covers the surface of a convex pattern (usually on wood or linoleum), and deep engraving, when the paint fills the recesses (usually on metal).
In Europe, engraving originated in the Middle Ages. Interest in it increased significantly at the beginning of the Renaissance, which was associated with an increased need for the dissemination and individual perception of ideas and knowledge. Engraving made it possible to quite easily replicate various images.
In Russia special interest engraving arose in the first half of the 18th century. reflecting real life Russia (battle scenes, panoramas of large cities, domestic scenes), engravings were a kind of propaganda and agitation tool, glorifying the power and prosperity of Russia.
The execution of engravings requires special skill. If the engraving, technical part of the work, including the processing of the board, is performed by one specialist artist, it is called original. Since the 15th-16th centuries, reproduction engravings have been widely used. Usually they reproduce the plots of already written paintings.
By purpose, engraving is divided mainly into easel, i.e. designed for independent existence, and book.
Gravure is a type of graphic art. Engraving is a printed impression for printing on paper or other surface. If to speak in simple terms, without really delving into complex terms, then an engraving is a metal board or a plane made of another material on which a certain pattern is carved by the artist, and which can then be transferred to paper, canvas or other material. There are many different types of relief boards from which you can get an impression, methods of making them, as well as varieties of engraving (Printing, Flat engraving, Convex engraving, Recessed engraving, Lithography, Algraphy, Woodcut, Linocut, Etching, Mezzotint, Aquatint and other). Nowadays, such engraving presses can be created in industrial conditions, but at the dawn of their appearance and for a very long time they were created entirely by hand. The greatest artists who only existed in the history of art were fond of and seriously engaged in engravings. It's worth saying that engravers, which create "boards" for printed graphics on their own and manually, still exist. Most of them use a manual production method in order to create not just some kind of stamp, but a truly artistic work. Also, for these purposes, they use not new, but the oldest methods of creating engravings, which were owned and used by such famous engravers the past, like, and others.
The first mention of engraving dates back to the 6th century AD. in China. Then it was a technique for creating seals, stamps and impressions, no longer of artistic, but of applied significance, although it cannot be said that that ancient engraving was not distinguished by its special beauty and grace. Engraving appeared in Europe in the 15th century (the first print from an engraving was made in Germany in 1423). Initially, embossed boards were used for printing playing cards, then books, documents, geographical maps, technical drawings, and so on. Soon after the engraving technique spread, became known and available, artists also became interested in it. Engraving and the first engravers appeared in Russia in 1464.
