For the Love of Lithographs - Mansion Global

While a form of printing, lithographs are no less masterful than oil on canvas. But what they do afford is accessibility. 

“The wonderful thing about lithographs is the access they give you to some of the world’s top artists,” said Deborah Ripley, director of prints & multiples, Bonhams New York. “It’s a very democratic art form, providing a way of connecting with great painters whose works would be out of reach for the vast majority of us. Great masters such as Munch and Picasso poured enormous creative energy into printmaking—reworking an initial idea often quite radically,”

 David Hockney, for example, is one of the world’s top artists and he relentlessly experiments with form. “Prints have been a major part of his output for 60 years or so and even his rare works are within reach,” Ms. Ripley said.  

Lithographs were discovered by happy accident in the 18th century by a German playwright who realized his scripts could be duplicated by writing them on limestone using greasy crayon and printing them on paper with rolled-on ink, a process which he could then repeat. 

The most traditional form of lithographs, called stone or hand-pulled lithographs, are created by drawing on a stone or metal plate with special greasy ink. The surface is then treated with a type of chemical solvent, which bonds the ink to the surface, forming an etching and ensuring that blank areas absorb water and repel printing ink. The original drawing is then wiped away with another solvent, leaving just a faint picture on the stone. An oil-based ink is rolled over the surface, only sticking to the drawn areas. Paper is placed against the plate and run through a press, which applies extreme pressure to produce an exact replica of what was drawn on the stone onto paper. From there, the original drawing can be printed onto paper again and again. 

Transfer lithography, whereby a drawing is done on paper instead of stone and then transferred to the stone and printed, retaining the paper’s texture in the final print, is a less laborious way to work in this medium. It was a technique employed by many artistic giants such as Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin.

Today, lithographic techniques have evolved with even more ease. Images can be drawn directly onto a polymer coating that’s applied to a flexible plastic or metal plate and printed directly from the plate. Or, they can be offset, a process by which the image is transferred onto a flexible rubber sheet for printing.

“Just because lithographic prints can be produced in multiples, that does not make the process any less serious or creative than, say, painting or sculpture,” said Anthony Barzilay Freund, editorial director and director of fine art for 1stdibs, an upscale e-commerce antiques and design marketplace based in New York. “A room’s warmth, interest and visual intrigue is in no way affected by whether the artwork over the sofa is one of a kind or from a series of many.” 

To spark conversation within your interiors, here are some of the most inspiring lithograph artists to add to your collection.

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For the Love of Lithographs - Mansion Global
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