20th Century Master Graphics

There’s no doubt about it. Some artists just radiate star power. They blaze a trail across their era and become familiar names in every household. They make us see things as we’d never previously imagined, and they turn the idea of art on its head. Breaking the mould in such spectacular fashion is incredibly hard, and the list of people who’ve done it is very short.
It’s tempting to imagine such legendary artists as inhabiting a different sphere to the rest of us, almost as if they lived beyond the real world. Once an artist becomes a sought-after addition to museum collections and makes the news for eye-watering sales records, we assume that they’ve moved beyond our reach and that we can only ever enjoy their work from a distance, much less own a piece of it for ourselves. Thankfully, this isn’t true.

While it’s true that an oil painting is beyond the reach of most of us, many 20^th century masters were also avid printmakers, bringing the full focus of their genius to the printing workshop. The original prints they produced are just that: originals in the same way that a painting is an original. They are handmade objects, created to exacting standards beneath the artist’s eye and touched by their own hands. When you stand in front of one, you’re standing where they once stood. You’re seeing what they once saw.
You’re also looking at an original artwork that can be acquired for a tiny fraction of the cost of a painting. It’s astonishing value. For many of the great 20th century artists, printmaking was a key element of their practice, bound up in who they were and how they saw themselves. The importance of these original master graphics can’t be overstated...
Whenever I bent over the lithography stone it was as though I was touching a talisman. It seemed as though I could pour all my sadness and joys into it. - Marc Chagall
Regarding the silkscreen technique, Andy Warhol declared

‘the reason I'm painting this way is that I want to be a machine, and I feel that whatever I do and do machine-like is what I want to do.’
Imagine, then, the thrill of hanging one of these artworks on your own wall at home. In doing so, you not only get to savour the joy of owning a beautiful object that took great discipline and skill to produce, but you also become a part of the artist’s legend, part of the artwork’s story. The importance of these objects is measured in decades and centuries, and by acquiring one yourself you’re embarking upon an incredible journey...
Bring an icon out of the museum and into your home and open a thrilling new chapter.
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