Offset lithography

The offset lithography is a since the 1930s, occupied by artists flatbed printing process .

history

The original lithography from stone has been increasingly replaced by offset printing , i.e. an indirect printing process , in the commercial sector since the 1920s and also in the artistic sector since the 1950s . Today stone lithography is only practiced in a few art colleges and in individual craft businesses.

In the artistic field, the original process was replaced by offset lithography (also aluminum graphics or original flat printing). Already on the first American artist Congress (First Americans Artists' Congress) 1936, the famous American painter and printmaker Harry Sternberg suggested that instead of using the hand lithography, the less expensive offset lithography. In this way one can reach a larger population group with high-quality art.

technology

In offset lithography, the artist designates or paints a transparent film with chalk or black ink, which is exposed to a thin aluminum plate using a chemical process. After the copying, developing and fixing process, the image is on the flexible printing plate and can be printed on an offset machine using a rubber blanket (cylinder against cylinder) . For a multi-colored offset lithography, a foil is produced for each color separation. Due to this simplified way of working, which allows uncomplicated handling and, in contrast to the classic lithography process, an almost unlimited print run, today almost all “lithographs” by contemporary artists are printed on offset printing machines. Nevertheless, these offset lithographs are usually only produced in limited editions on handmade paper and numbered and hand-signed by the artist. Today, many, including world-famous, artists use offset lithography, which was first widely used with Pop Art .

The offset lithographs, which still show the artist's unchanged style, are not to be confused with offset reproductions of paintings , drawings and watercolors by the artists, which are captured photographically or with scanners and broken down into their four basic colors , enlarged or reduced at will on offset machines can be printed. These offset reproductions are also often limited and hand-signed. Artists like Gerhard Richter or Sigmar Polke used this large-scale process in the production of their prints. For them this reproductive way of working is part of the artistic strategy.

Well-known offset lithographers

literature

Allan L. Edmunds, Halima Taha: Three decades of American printmaking: the Brandywine Workshop collection , Hudson Hills, 2004, pp. 64 ff., ISBN 978-1-5559-5241-9 (complete on Google Books )
Horst Eschwege: The original flat printing: Some remarks on historical, artistic and technical requirements , Eschwege and Wölbing, Friedrichsdorf, 1984
Garo Z. Antreasian et al: The Tamarind book of lithography: art & techniques , Tamarind Lithography Workshop, 1971, p. 281 ff.

Individual evidence

↑ Helen Langa: Radical art: printmaking and the left in 1930s New York , University of California Press, 2004, pp. 31, 49 ff., ISBN 978-0-5202-3155-9 (also on Google Books)

[1] Helen Langa: Radical art: printmaking and the left in 1930s New York , University of California Press, 2004, pp. 31, 49 ff., ISBN 978-0-5202-3155-9 (also on Google Books)