Abstract :
Since Gutenberg, Germany has been a pioneer in the developments of press and original printmaking as well as scientific and technological progresses. When we have a look at the art history, we can see that artistic tendencies which emerged from this country have a remarkable place in the European and global art. Especially the beginning of the 20th century was an era when German expressionists developed effective expression forms with social topics as a reaction to the impressionism. Print making had an important role in the spread of this artistic language. With their long history, woodprint and engravings were two of the most important printmaking tools of the expressionist artists in this period too. About 20 years after Senefelder’s invention in Munich In 1796, Lithography was spread around the world in the area of commercial printing and, with the visual riches it offered, it became an expression and duplication device appealing to the expressionists too. Based on the basic principle of physics that oil and water repulse each other, this technique was implemented with the chemical processes in the beginning, and it is the ancestor of the modern offset technologies. Lithography made knowledge more accessible with the advancements through the end of 19th Century, by reducing the cost of printing any product such as books, posters, graphic products. Hence it raised the literacy level in Europe. The topics of the lithographic art at the beginning of the 20th century were mainly social problems caused by rapid improvement in industry and urbanization while destruction of war and class discrimination was also discussed. With the visual riches, printing speed, and low cost it offered, lithography definitely had an important place in the rapid spread of German expressionism which influenced the European art profoundly. This article examines the language of lithography employed by the German expressionists. It also analyses, through samples of lithographic work, how the group formations that emerged in this period through the collaboration of artists have impacted on art.
NaturalLanguageKeyword :
Expressionism , Original Printing , Lithography , Die Brücke , Der Blaue Reiter
