Printmaking techniques. Wood engraving

Wood engraving or woodcut is a printing technique allowing to make prints on paper using a wooden block. The print is made with a matrix – a relief printing form, in which the part in relief acts as a printing element. The artist applies ink to the block and settles it, then prints on a paper sheet, sometimes using a press. Wood engraving blocks are usually made of hardwoods such as palm tree, boxwood or cherry.

A piece of wood can be divided into blocks lengthwise and crosswise. A print created with a longitudinal side of wood is called a woodcut; a print created with a block, which was cut in the end-grain – a wood or against-the-grain engraving. The against-the-grain technique was first used in the 18th century by the artist Thomas Bewick (1753–1828). This method allowed to imitate brushstrokes and thus was widely used since the 19th century for creating reproductions of artworks. Wood engraving also let create prints not only with black strokes, but with white ones as well.

In the 20th century, colored engravings appear – they are made using a combination of several blocks – one block is cut for each color and then consecutively applied on a paper sheet. Along with it, the whole wood engraving production process is now executed by one artist as opposed to earlier methods when a print was produced by several people responsible for different stages of the process: drawers, engravers, stampers.

This exhibition presents examples of worldwide-recognized Russian engravings produced by Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Vladimir Favorskiy, Alexey Kravchenko, Nikolay Kupreyanov, David Shterenberg, Gennadiy Yepifanov, Illarion Golitsyn – it is impossible nowadays to imagine art of the 20th century without these artists.