Brief history of the engraving technique

Abstract

The technique of engraving has its origin in China, the first printmakers who met dating from the thirteenth century; the majority was goldsmiths and silversmiths, or cartoonists experts that were recorded on metal. However, it is up to the Baroque period when they get more progress with regard to the technique of the rotogravure. These new methods include techniques such as aquatint, dithering, etching the soft varnish, the way black or mezzotinta and the crayon. On the other hand, the flowering of trade in recorded was of such consideration that in 1735 it was to enact a law to protect the artistic property and promote the export. In this way, the production of graphic images bifurcaria in two; the recorded seen as an art reduced to the collection, and the graphic image produced in series to its massive growth. The latter subsequently favored by the printed image of the lithography and photography. And it should be recalled that before the printing press, the engraving was not considered as an art, but as a means of communication. More, it is from 1950, with the contemporary avant-garde, the graphic tradition is challenged by the emergence of new procedures for reproduction and the alternatives that were in the conventional processes