“The woodcut is the most graphic of the printmaking techniques. Its practice demands much technical ability and interest. Kirchner's technical skill made woodcutting easy for him. Thus he came in a spontaneous way through the simplification necessary here to a clear style of representation. We see in his woodcuts, which constantly accompanied his creative work, the formal language of the paintings prefigured.”

—  Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

de:Louis de Marsalle (pseudonym of Kirchner) Uber Kirchners Graphik, Genius 3, no. 2 (1921), p. 252-53; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 52
1920's

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 54
German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker 1880–1938

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo

“Nowhere does one come to know an artist better than in his prints [and] the woodcut is the most graphic of the print processes.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

quote of 1921; de:Louis de Marsalle, in 'Uber Kirchners Graphik', Genius 3, no. 2, p. 252; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', by I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 39
Kirchner expressed the significance of print-making for German Expressionism in general when he wrote this quote
1920's

Erich Heckel photo

“I finished my first woodcut in Dresden in 1905 after the Xylographic art, cutting out of the hard boxwood the clean sketches with the slate pencil. Then followed the rounded iron, to arrive at the woodcut more freely through the simply ripped out sketch on the log (alder, lime tree, poplar), which would be utilized from here on out. Then finally came a short cobbler knife, and without a pré-sketch, the hand cuts freely into the wood a woodcut, just like it would work on paper with the pen.”

Erich Heckel (1883–1970) German artist

Heckel later summarized in this way his woodcut developments, mainly developed during his years in Die Brücke
Source: Brücke' Zeichnungen, Aquarelle, Druckgraphik, Magdalena M. Moeller; Verlag Gerd Hatje, Stuttgart 1992, p. 21; as quoted by Louise Albiez https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272168564Claire (incl. translation), Brücke und Berlin: 100 Jahre Expressionismus; submitted to the Division of Humanities New College of Florida, Sarasota, Florida, May, 2013 p.12

Ernst Barlach photo

“As the misfortune befell in November [1918], I threw myself into the woodcut... It is a technique that provokes one to confession, to the unmistakable statement of what one finally means. It, or far more she, enforces a certain general validity of expression... I have finished a number of large woodcuts that deal with all of the distress of the times.”

Ernst Barlach (1870–1938) German expressionist sculptor, printmaker and writer

Barlach in a letter to his cousin, 1919; in Erhard Gopel, Deutsche Holzschnitte des zwanzigsten Jahr- hunderts, Wiesbaden: Insel Verlag, 1955, p. 44; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 46
Barlach explained why the woodcut spoke so poignantly to the current times

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“But has man's political skill marched hand-in-hand with his technical and scientific skill? Man can chain lightning to his command-can be control the society in which be lives? The answer is No! The political skill of man has been far outstripped by technical skill, and what lie has made he cannot be sure of controlling.”

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Emil Nolde photo

“In the working of wood and for the determining of its character I had had enough experience in my five-year pursuit of woodcutting. I also always gladly let the various charming grainings and sometimes the knots become involved in the printing.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

in Nolde's letter, c. 1910; in Alois J. Schardt, 'Nolde als Graphiker', Das Kunstblatt 11, no. 8., 1927, p. 289; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 52
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Steve Jobs photo

“Pixar is the most technically advanced creative company; Apple is the most creatively advanced technical company.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

As quoted in Fortune (21 February 2005)
2000s

Jacques Bertin photo

“And now, at the end of the twentieth century, with the pressure of modern information and the advances of data processing, graphics is passing through a new and fundamental stage. The great difference between the graphic representation of yesterday, which was poorly dissociated from the figurative image, and the graphics of tomorrow, is the disappearance of the congential fixity of the image.
When one can superimpose, juxtapose, transpose, and permute graphic images in ways that lead to groupings and classings, the graphic image passes from the dead image, the 'illustration,' to the living image, the widely accessible research instrument it is now becoming. The graphic is no longer only the 'representation' of a final simplification, it is a point of departure for the discovery of these simplifications and the means for their justification. The graphic has become, by its manageability, an instrument for information processing.”

Jacques Bertin (1918–2010) French geographer and cartographer

Source: Semiology of graphics (1967/83), p. 4

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“For the painter, for whom painting is a vital activity and a way of life — not merely a profession — such attitudes as we find in the histories are deadly. For him the only benefit, at least the deepest and most important benefit, which he can get from the study of the Masters comes from his capacity to see the painting in a thoroughly contemporary way. I mean in the present tense — the tense after all in which it was painted. Not for instance as an early this or a late that, nor as a good example of chiaroscuro or some other aesthetic or technical quality but as an immediately important human statement completely relevant to his life at the moment and convincing for that reason. If a work does not strike the painter in this way all further analysis of it will be futile.”

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Edward Hopper photo

“The technical obstacles of painting perhaps dictate this form. It derives also from the limitations of personality, and such may be the simplifications that I have attempted.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

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Jacques Ellul photo

“Sport carries on without deviation the mechanical tradition of furnishing relief and distraction to the worker after he has finished his work proper so that he is at no time independent of one technique or another. In sport the citizen of the technical society finds the same spirit, criteria, morality, actions and objectives—in short, all the technical laws and customs—which he encounters in office or factory.”

Jacques Ellul book The Technological Society

Source: The Technological Society (1954), p. 384

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