20th Century Master Graphics

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.

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.’