The upheaval and discontent spawned by the Depression contributed to a democratization of art in the 1930s. They valued precise draughtsmanship and technical virtuosity more highly than innovation. The exhibition of prints was controlled largely by conservative print societies, such as the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Society of American Etchers. Some artists emulated the Old Masters, but most printmakers remained within the strong American tradition of realism, modified at times with selected elements of abstraction, expressionism, or surrealism. Modern stylistic developments introduced into the United States at the famous Armory Show of 1913 had little effect on American printmakers. Although many excellent prints were created, most of them were small in size, black and white, linear in conception, and technically conservative. Prior to the 1940s, the standards by which prints were made and judged in the United States were conceived largely in terms of established artistic tradition. At Stanley William Hayter's workshop in New York, artists were exploring new ways of working in the medium of intaglio printmaking. Louis Schanker and Werner Drewes were re-evaluating and expanding the possibilities of the color woodcut. Serigraphy, a technique developed on one of the federal art projects, was emerging as an imaginative new method of color printing. During the early 1940s, artists fresh from the WPA graphic art projects were eager to continue their work in printmaking. Lasansky arrived in New York at a time when printmaking in the United States was undergoing a major redirection and revitalization. When he was offered a Guggenheim Fellowship to study printmaking in New York in 1943, he welcomed the opportunity to broaden his experience. Although he had achieved recognition and prominence as a young man, Lasansky did not become complacent. At the age of twenty-two, Lasansky was asked to direct the Free School of Fine arts in Cordoba, where he avidly pursued his interest in printmaking. As a student he worked with various media, including painting and sculpture, but already by the age of nineteen he began to concentrate on printmaking at the Superior School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the city of his birth. Mauricio Lasansky is one of the very few modern artists who have limited their work almost exclusively to the graphic media. It is the first time in history that China used intaglio printing technique, which also made China the few countries at that time that mastered such technique.Mauricio Lasansky and Intaglio Printmaking Also, they imported many American engraving machines and built a large printing house to issue new banknotes. In order to master this technique to confront the economic invasion from colonists, as well as restore the national economy, in 1909, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing spent high price on inviting American engravers to China to teach them the steel-intaglio printing technique. Comparing with the cooper one, steel-engraving was more solid in texture, elaborate in pattern and durable in plate, which made it hard to counterfeit. By 1900s, there existed two different intaglio technologies: copper-engraving technique and steel-engraving technique. This technology first appeared in late 1430s. The printmaker creates tones by rubbing down or burnishing the rough surface to varying degrees of smoothness to change the ink-holding capacity of chosen areas on the plate. If printed at this stage the print image would be solid black. In the process of mezzotint, the printing plate was indented by rocking a toothed metal tool across the surface. Soft copper plates are generally used for drypoint printing. It is inked and creates a velvety appearance. However, in drypoint the curl of displaced metal that forms as the line is cut, called the burr, is not removed. In the process of drypoint, marks are made on a plate using a sharp, pointed instrument. In the process of engraving, the image is created by the burin, a wedge or lozenge-shaped tool, directly on the plate. Etching is also used as a catch-all term for any intaglio process employing an acid bath in the production of an image. Typically, the hard ground is drawn through with a needle, exposing the metal to form the image to be printed. The ground is a coating used to protect the plate from the action of the acid. In the process of etching, acid is used to bite an image into a metal plate coated with an acid-resistant ground. Basically, intaglio processes include etching, engraving, drypoint, and mezzotint: It incised image into a surface, then the incised line or sunken area holds the ink. Intaglio is a kind of printing technique that is opposite to relief print.
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