Globally, and in the Arab world, the 20th century saw a rapid proliferation of print culture for an increasingly literate society with greater access to print materials for producing fine art prints and publishing literature in printing houses. The production of books, posters, and fine art prints, which were relatively recently rooted in the region, became very intertwined.
The avant-garde art thrust of this period and the transnational political movements following postcolonial independence compelled innovation in artistic methods and techniques – both manual and mechanized – and experimentation with a broader range of materials. It allowed fine art printmaking artists to be more tactile in their artistic experimentation and to disseminate their art to wider audiences. Thus, fine art printmaking emerged as a thoroughly modern medium, essential to the creative and political condition of the last century.
While modern Arab artists initially focused on painting and sculpting, fine art print culture became vital in shaping national and transnational visual languages and identities. In particular, Rafa Nasiri (1940-2013), an Iraqi artist and pioneer printmaker, traces the genealogy of fine art printmaking’s traction and boom in the Arab world to the 1960s and the social and political revolutions of that decade that led to a proliferation of transnational graphic arts: “Just as graphic art was affected by (all of these) artistic and intellectual events and revolutions, it was also affected by the results of modern industrial and political developments.”
October 15, 2024