Printmaking has been an important and respected art form in Australia since the late 19th century, with painters such as Tom Roberts and Julian Ashton making etchings as a small, but significant, part of their practice.
The first decades of the 20th century saw enormous technological and cultural change, and as Australian society transitioned into the modern era, so did the work of many artists. Australian artists were exposed to international developments in art through publications and from peers returning from studying abroad. Previous barriers between the realms of fine art, craft and design were gradually dissolved and nowhere was this more apparent than in printmaking.
Seeking to capture the spirit of the new age, printmakers sought new ways of expressing values that were reshaping the cities and towns. Speed, colour, design and above all a desire for the ‘new’ galvanised a new generation of artists, many of them women, into creating prints that were unlike anything seen before in this country.
This selection of works from the Gallery’s collection of modern Australian prints reveals a number of common threads: the aesthetics of the Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock print, the teachings of British printmaker Claude Flight, and the graphic traditions of Europe.