I got into textile screen printing a few months ago and devoured a really clear article that finally made me understand the technique. The principle is simple: you push ink through a stencil stretched over a frame, but behind that apparent simplicity lies real craftsmanship.
To get started, you need a frame with a fine mesh, photosensitive emulsion, a squeegee and textile inks. You expose the screen to UV light through a film positive, rinse it, and the design appears in negative. This exposure step is the one that demands the most precision.
What I love about this technique is the result: intense, opaque colours, even on dark fabrics, and a durability that digital printing can't match. On the other hand, it's less suited to very small runs because of the preparation time.
My advice for starting out without breaking the bank: a basic kit costs around €150–400, and you can even use sunlight for exposure on a near-zero budget. Taking online courses also helps a lot to avoid costly mistakes.
Source: Pickles Graphic
Until December 6, 2026, the Ota Memorial Museum of Art in Harajuku, Tokyo, is hosting “Katsushika Oi's ‘Interior of a Yoshiwara Brothel’ and the Lineage of Night Views.” The first period runs until November 3, and the second begins November 7. Apart from “Interior of a Yoshiwara Brothel,” all the works are swapped between the two periods.
The main attraction is Katsushika Oi's hand-painted picture “Interior of a Yoshiwara Brothel.” Only a dozen or so of Oi's paintings are known to exist, and this masterpiece is being shown for the first time in three years. Its defining feature is the contrast between light and shadow.
The other highlight is an exhibition that follows the flow of night scenes in ukiyo-e. It includes works depicting starry nights, fireworks and rainy evenings, such as Utagawa Hiroshige's “Famous Views of Edo: Night Scene at Saruwaka-chō,” Kobayashi Kiyochika's “Tokyo Ryōgoku Bridge in the Age of Civilization,” and pieces by Torii Kiyonaga and Utagawa Kunisada. Hiroshige's deep indigo night sky and Kiyochika's night views of the city in the early Meiji era are a pairing I would love to see side by side.
In addition, night-view prints made in the late Meiji period for overseas markets are introduced. They include reproductions and homages based on works by Hiroshige and Kiyochika, and the show also looks at the publishers Hasegawa Takejirō and Watanabe Shōzaburō.
In woodblock prints, the “night” changes dramatically depending on how the sumi ink and indigo are layered. I felt that anyone interested in printmaking would enjoy it even more. Admission is 1,200 yen for adults, and it is cash only.
Source: Ota Memorial Museum of Art
If you are anywhere near Newcastle upon Tyne this autumn, Lino North is worth a visit. The exhibition is on at The Biscuit Factory (16 Stoddart Street) from 11 September to 29 November 2026, open daily from 10:00 to 17:00, and admission is free.
It brings together sixteen linocut printmakers from across the North of England, Wales and Scotland: Ade Adesina, Bryan Angus, Laura Boswell, Linda Farquarson, Graham Firth, Eric Gaskell, Fiona Humphrey, Karen Menarry, Joshua Miles, Ingrid Nilsson, Babs Pease, Ian Phillips, Rosanna Reade, Masha Tiplady, Jane Walker and Deb Wing.
The show focuses on the physical process of the medium: carving, inking and printing. Some of the artists work by reduction, cutting and printing a single block in stages. Others layer several blocks to build up colour and structure. Seeing both approaches side by side is a nice way to understand why two linocuts can feel so different.
The exhibition is part of the gallery's ongoing interest in printmaking and material-led practice, and the artists will give talks and demonstrations about their methods during the run. I would especially like to catch one of those, because the way people explain their carving choices is often the most useful part for anyone learning.
Source: ArtRabbit
The printmaking exhibition Print Parade #4 will be held at Kiniko Art, Tirtonirmolo, Kasihan, Bantul, DIY, from 12 to 27 September 2026. This year the show features works by the late artist Danang Hadi, members and former members of Studio Grafis Minggiran, and several invited printmakers. The exhibition will be opened on 12 September by the artist Ong Harry Wahyu.
Curator Bambang ‘Toko’ Witjaksono explains that Print Parade is not merely a place to display works, but also a space to remember, reflect on the journey, share experiences, and open dialogue between generations of printmakers. This year's theme is “Bridging the Journey and the Renewal of Indonesian Graphic Art”. Print Parade was first held in 2013.
Works by interns of Studio Grafis Minggiran from 2023 to 2026 are also on display. The studio, founded in 2001, is said to keep graphic art alive as a practice that continues to grow.
To me, the most moving part is how the exhibition brings together the late artist's works and the younger generation. Printmaking needs new hands so that its process does not stop in the archive.
Source: DISTORI
After two years closed for works, the Goya Museum of the Ibercaja Foundation in Zaragoza is reopening to coincide with the Pilar festivities. What interests me most is what it says about the prints, because for many people Goya is the great master of etching in Spain.
According to the published information, the refurbishment increases the exhibition space from 3,700 to 4,660 square metres and adds seven technological experiences, such as an immersive room and virtual reality glasses. Its director, Mai Forcén, insists it is not a technology museum: the technology only accompanies and gives context. Even the façade is engraved with details from the painter's work.
For those of us who follow printmaking, the museum has its print room and a renovated print gallery. Thanks to the extension, the Velázquez Copies, made by Goya between 1778 and 1785, are now on show, along with another series that had never been exhibited before. With his full series of prints and 33 Goyas, the museum is, after the Prado, the one that displays the most works by the Aragonese painter.
To celebrate the reopening, the Foundation has brought together nearly fifty Goya works from museums and collections around the world in the exhibition "Solo Goya. El Arte de ver", curated by Luis Fernández-Galiano, which can be visited until 10 January. The museum has also added to its collection some panels by Sorolla and a large silk canvas by Roberto Fabelo.
Personally, what attracts me most is the chance to see the prints in a room designed for them, and without rushing, ahead of Goya's bicentenary in 2028.
Source: EL PAÍS
At the Galerie Henze & Ketterer in Wichtrach, near Bern, an exhibition runs until 30 October 2026, and as a woodcut fan I was curious at once. On the upper floor of the gallery, woodcuts by Georg Baselitz and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner are placed opposite each other.
At the centre are six large-format remix woodcuts by Baselitz, which reinterpret hero images from his early period. Opposite them are key woodcuts by Kirchner from every phase of his career. It makes visible how both artists work with repetition and reformulation, and how two generations of German art history each developed a timeless visual force in their own way.
What I find especially interesting is that an accompanying online catalogue pairs each exhibited woodcut with its painted counterpart. With the woodcut, where one motif can exist in several versions, that comparison between print and painting is well worth the effort.
The gallery is at Kirchstrasse 26 in Wichtrach and is open Tuesday to Friday from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m., or by appointment. The exhibition has been running since 1 May 2025, so only a few weeks remain.
Source: Interlaken Tourismus (Source: guidle.com)
The Tver Local History Museum has received a donation of 34 prints on the Patriotic War of 1812 and the Napoleonic Wars. The press service of the Tver regional government reported it, and I think it is good news for anyone who cares about old printed graphics.
The donor is Mikhail Karisalov, an industrialist, collector and patron. He has collected engravings and lithographs on Russia's war with Napoleon for a long time, and decided to hand the collection to the museum because the region has a historical link to the events of 1812. Aleksandr Avdeyev, former Russian Minister of Culture and ambassador to France and the Vatican, helped him choose the materials. According to the report, Avdeyev owns one of the best private collections of prints on Russian-French relations.
The sheets date from the first half and the middle of the 19th century. Their makers are French, Polish and Russian engravers. The masters named include François and Jules Couché, Jean Réville, Adolphe-Jean-Baptiste Bayot, Pierre Girardet, Jean-Louis Langlois, Adrien Ladurner and Auguste Ober. The subjects range from the crossing of the Neman and the Battle of Borodino, through the fighting at Smolensk, Polotsk, Maloyaroslavets and Pultusk and the crossing of the Berezina, to the burning of Moscow, the French army's retreat, the meetings of Alexander I and Napoleon at Tilsit and Erfurt, and the entry of the allied monarchs into Paris on 31 March 1814. The report does not say which techniques were used for each sheet.
No major battles took place in Tver Province, but it contributed to the victory: the Tver militia was formed there and defended Moscow. What I find most interesting is that such prints once worked as news in pictures, and now they will become part of the region's permanent history.
Source: МК в Твери
An exhibition focusing on 'laughter' as depicted in ukiyo-e is being held at the Machida City International Print Museum. It runs from September 12 to November 23, 2026, with the first period ending October 12 and the second period beginning October 15. Centered on the museum's ukiyo-e collection, about 250 works are on display across both periods.
The theme is that even in the late Edo and Meiji eras, when natural disasters and war stirred anxiety, ukiyo-e continued to depict laughter through caricature and satire. The exhibition has six sections, beginning with Utagawa Hiroshige's views of famous places and caricatures, and Utagawa Kuniyoshi's comic and satirical prints.
The following sections introduce namazu-e made after the Ansei Edo earthquake, prints of the 1862 measles epidemic, and 'awate-e' showing people flustered by the arrival of foreign fleets after the Namamugi Incident. Further on come Shōsai Ikkei's enlightenment pictures that layer people struggling with modernization over famous places, nishiki-e newspapers, and Kobayashi Kiyochika's 'punch pictures.' The structure lets you trace how prints reflected the atmosphere of the age.
Because woodblock prints could be printed in large numbers at once, topical jokes and irony spread quickly through society. The idea that the expression of laughter was itself the media of the time is very interesting to a printmaking enthusiast like me.
During the run there are commemorative lectures and gallery talks, and you can also enjoy the small concurrent exhibition 'Miró and Tàpies: Turmoil in Postwar Spain' (free admission). Admission is 1,000 yen for general visitors, and the museum closes on Mondays, so check the schedule on the official website before you go.
Source: Machida City International Print Museum
Hyperallergic's Bridget Quinn reviewed Holly EJ Black's 2026 book The Story of Printmaking: A Global History of Art, and her argument stuck with me: the history of printmaking is, at heart, a history of democratizing art.
Quinn's starting point is how scarce images used to be. Before printing spread, pictures were mostly tied to religious ritual, sacred spaces, specialized education or wealth. Prints were among the first and most lasting challenges to that exclusivity, because they were the first art objects that could be duplicated in large numbers and passed from hand to hand.
The review also points out that printmaking is often treated as secondary to painting and sculpture, even though prints carried religious belief and intellectual history around the world, and served as tools of propaganda and protest. According to Quinn, Black's book brings in perspectives from many regions and puts figures who may not have been artists themselves at the center of the story.
The review is illustrated with Hokusai's Fuji Seen from Kanaya on the Tokaido, from Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (c. 1830-32), a good reminder of how a woodblock could make one image reach a huge audience.
As someone who enjoys woodcut and linocut, I liked this framing. Every time you pull a print, you are doing a small version of the same thing: making one idea available to many hands. Quinn closes by suggesting the message is especially relevant right now, and I think she is right.
Source: Hyperallergic
A small special exhibition, "Miró and Tàpies: Vortex of Postwar Spain 1945–1980", is on at the Machida City International Print Museum. It runs from 4 September to 23 November 2026, admission is free, and it is held in the permanent exhibition galleries.
The show introduces artists who kept seeking freedom of the spirit in postwar Spain under Franco's dictatorship, when freedom of expression was restricted. Joan Miró and Antoni Tàpies are at the centre, alongside works by Antoni Clavé, Eduardo Chillida and Rafael Canogar. Around 25 works are on display.
As a print lover, what caught my eye is that the works list their techniques. Miró's "Captive Woman" (1969) is made with etching, aquatint and carborundum, and is a deposited work held by the museum. Another piece, "Nocturne" (1953), is a lithograph included in issues 57, 58 and 59 of the print magazine Derrière le Miroir, and it is part of the museum's collection. It is striking how differently the lines and surfaces look when the same artist changes technique.
Miró stated his anti-Franco position early on and stayed in Spain as an "internal exile". From his native Catalonia he built a poetic world in which stars and birds become signs. Tàpies expressed life, death and the spirit of resistance by layering rough letters and symbols over heavy textures that suggest walls or earth.
Opening hours are 10:00 to 17:00 on weekdays and to 17:30 on weekends and public holidays. The museum is closed on Mondays, but it will open on 12 October and close on the 13th. The exhibition list is published as a PDF, so I want to check it before going.
Source: Machida City International Print Museum
The Płazów woodcut is one of those traditions that are easy to overlook and well worth knowing. It is a collection of 19th-century woodcut printing blocks linked to Płazów in Lubaczów County: 13 wooden tablets, some carved on both sides, giving 22 blocks in all. The subjects are mainly religious: scenes from the Old and New Testaments, images of Mary and Jesus, and saints of the Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic Churches.
The reconstruction of the blocks of Maciej Kostrzycki from Płazów was taken on by Józef Lewkowicz, a folk artist from Nowe Sioło. According to Rzeszów Info, it is painstaking work: the surviving patterns have to be read and transferred onto wood while keeping the language of old art. In 2022, “Revival and Development of the Płazów Woodcut” was entered in the national register of good practices for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, and Lewkowicz became one of the first official custodians of the tradition. In 2025 he received the “Meritorious for Polish Culture” badge.
The exhibition “Józef Lewkowicz – Within the Circle of the Płazów Woodcut” at the F. Kotula Ethnographic Museum in Rzeszów (Rynek 6) shows prints of the reconstructed images as well as the artist's own works. The opening was set for 24 September 2026 at 5 pm, and admission was free. The highlight was to be the unveiling of his newest piece, a woodcut of St. Onuphrius, the 16th reconstructed block.
I am glad that someone treats a piece of wood and the line cut into it as living history, not just an exhibit behind glass.
Source: Rzeszów Info
