CDR-1360: SR Set: The Woodcut

The woodcut, that most elemental of print forms, arose in northern Europe around 1400 with the new availability of paper. The earliest prints were generally of a devotional nature and rapidly became popular, largely because of their affordability, in contrast to costly illuminated manuscripts. Early masters such as Dürer and Holbein took the woodcut to great heights, but it was quickly obscured by other print forms of engraving, etching, lithography, etc. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw a resurgence of the woodcut with artists like Gauguin and Munch exploring new techniques and aesthetics in an old medium, to be continued by the Die Brücke artists who saw the expressive power of brutal knife lines and gouges in a block of wood. Artists continue to explore the possibilities of the woodcut into the twenty-first century.

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