Twentieth-century art underwent a profound transformation: in a more materialist, more consumerist society, art was directed to the senses, not to the intellect. The avant-garde movements arose, which sought to integrate art into society through a greater interrelation between artist and spectator, since it is the latter who interprets the work, being able to discover meanings that the artist did not even know.
The most commonly used graphic methods were woodcut, lithography, etching and silkscreen printing, and new techniques such as color aquatint were developed. The offset printing also emerged, which revolutionized graphic art. Offset is a process similar to lithography, consisting of applying an ink on a metal plate, usually aluminum. It was the parallel product of two inventors: in 1875, the British Robert Barclay developed a version for printing on metals (tin) and, in 1903, the American Ira Washington Rubel adapted it for printing on paper.
France Voillard
At the turn of the century, the art dealer and gallery owner Ambroise Vollard became a significant publisher. In 1890 he opened a gallery in Paris, where he exhibited the work of artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. In 1901 he organized the first exhibition of works by Pablo Picasso. Vollard was especially concerned with promoting the work of marginal artists, artists rejected by the official salons. A true lover of prints, his success in the sale of paintings allowed him to subsidize the editions of prints purely out of personal interest, since it rarely brought him profits. He was also concerned about the quality of the productions, always trying to have the best materials and the best technicians.
Most of Vollard's production focused on limited editions for collectors, made by the best artists of the day. Another field of publishing for Vollard was the illustrated book for bibliophiles, of which he promoted twenty-two projects between 1900 and 1939. Vollard always selected the artist, whom he sometimes let select the text he would like to illustrate. His first edition was Parallèlement by Paul Verlaine, illustrated by Pierre Bonnard, which was a commercial failure, as was the next, Daphnis and Chloe, also by Bonnard. Made in lithography, for the next edition he opted for the woodcut, more appreciated by collectors: Imitation of Christ, illustrated by Maurice Denis, was a sales success. Among his subsequent editions, the following stand out: Les Amours by Pierre de Ronsard (1915, Émile Bernard), Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire (1916, Bernard), Œuvres de maistre François Villon (1919, Bernard), Les Petites Fleurs de Saint François (1928, Bernard), Les âmes mortes by Nikolai Gogol (1924–1925, Marc Chagall), Les Fables by La Fontaine (1926–1931, Chagall), La Belle Enfant ou L'Amour à quarante ans by Eugène Montfort (1930, Raoul Dufy), L'Ancien Testament (1931–1939, Chagall).
During the First World War, due to the difficulty in finding quality materials, he had to resort to photoengraving for some of his editions. Even so, he achieved quality products, especially thanks to the collaboration on the artistic side of Georges Rouault. Vollard's first collaboration with this artist took place in 1912, when Rouault offered him to edit a Miserere on which he was working; Vollard bought it in exchange for illustrating a book written by the dealer himself, Les Réincarnations du Père Ubu, which would not see the light until 1932. The Miserere (1916–1927) is one of the most original and creative series of prints of the 20th century, in which the artist combined different techniques: the drawing was transferred to copper plates by means of heliogravure, on which Rouault worked with acid and etching tools, achieving unique tones and values in the history of printmaking. In the 1920s, Vollard resumed publishing original prints, publishing works by Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Raoul Dufy, Jules Flandrin, Tsuguharu Foujita, Aristide Maillol and Maurice de Vlaminck. His last two editions, before his death, were of works by Rouault: Cirque de l'étoile filante (1938) and Passioné (1939).
Picasso Vollard's best editorial fruit was undoubtedly his collaboration with Pablo Picasso, which gave rise to one of the best series of prints made in the century: the Vollard Suite. Picasso started making prints in Barcelona, where in 1899 he made The Left-Hander, a work that did not fully satisfy him. He continued his graphic work in Paris, where he was influenced by Toulouse-Lautrec, as can be seen in his poster for Els Quatre Gats or his illustrations for the magazines Joventut and Catalunya Artística. In 1904, installed in Montmartre, he made La comida frugal, an original composition that he elaborated in copper plate, where he portrays the misery of a poor couple. The following year he elaborated the series of Saltimbanquis, one of his favorite subjects of the rose period, a set of fourteen prints published by Vollard in 1913. From then until 1920 he only made prints sporadically and on commission, mostly by friends of his, such as the Poems by André Salmon (1905), the Saint Matorel by Max Jacob (109–1910)—already in cubist style—and The Siege of Jerusalem, also by Jacob (1914). In 1922 he produced a series of Bathers, published by Marcel Guiat.
In the 1920s, Picasso's relationship with Vollard grew closer: a series of etchings made by Picasso in 1927 on the theme of the artist and his model was acquired by the dealer to illustrate The Unknown Masterpiece by Honoré de Balzac, published in 1931. It was then that Vollard commissioned a series of prints that the artist produced between 1930 and 1937, and which was published in 1939: the Vollard Suite. It is a set of one hundred prints—most of them etchings and some drypoint—of diverse subject matter, divided into several sequences; the largest (about forty) revolve around the theme The sculptor's workshop, centered on the relationship between a sculptor, his model and his work, an autobiographical reference in which the model is Marie-Thérèse Walter, his partner at the time; another group revolves around the theme of The Rape, while there are several dedicated to the figure of The Minotaur, among which stands out Blind Minotaur in the Dark, considered one of the best of the series; there are also three portraits of Vollard. At the same time, in 1931 he illustrated for the publisher Albert Skira The Metamorphoses by Ovid. In 1935 he made La minotauromaquia, an etching on copper plate, where he takes up again the figure of the minotauro; it is considered one of the stylistic precedents of Guernica. Between 1936 and 1937 he illustrated Historia natural by Buffon (published in 1942), again commissioned by Vollard, a set of thirty-one sugar etchings in a realistic style. In 1937, he made Sueño y mentira de Franco, a set of eighteen small vignette-like images engraved on two copper plates, as a denunciation against the Spanish Civil War and against Francisco Franco; a thousand copies were printed and sold at the Pabellón de la República Española of the Exposición Internacional de París of that year.
After a few years of graphic inactivity, after World War II he took up lithography, generally on zinc plate. Between 1945 and 1951 he made several portraits of Françoise Gilot, his new partner, mother of his children Claude and Paloma. During this period he also tackled subjects such as fauns, doves and still lifes, as well as several versions of Cranach's Susanna in the Bath. Among his works of those years stand out: La mujer sentada y la mujer dormida (1947), Retrato de Góngora (1947), Los faunos músicos (1948) and his famous Paloma (1949), which was taken as the logo of the World Peace Congress. Since 1955, his relationship with Jacqueline Roque, his second wife, led him to a stylistic turn, whereby he returned to expressionist deformation and grotesque and erotic themes. His love for bullfighting returned and, in 1957, he illustrated the life of the bullfighter Pepe-Hillo, working mainly in linoleum. In 1966 he returned to etching, with an increasingly sexual theme, in which the women are huge, fat figures. Between 1970 and 1971 he produced a series of 156 prints for the Leiris gallery, generally of women lying down and men looking at them.
Picasso was the most prominent representative of Cubism, a movement based on the deformation of reality through the destruction of the spatial perspective of Renaissance origin, through an organization of space according to a geometric plot, with simultaneous vision of objects and a range of cold and muted colors. The members of this group contributed a new conception of the work of art, thanks to the introduction of collage. Other exponents of this movement in the graphic field were Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Louis Marcoussis and Jacques Villon. Braque was, together with Picasso, the father of cubism. His printmaking started late, once he had already abandoned cubism and in a neoclassical style, as can be seen in his etchings for the Theogony of Hesiod (1931). The Spaniard Juan Gris began in humorous drawing in magazines such as Le Charivari and Le Cri de Paris. In 1912 he switched to cubism, with an orthodox style but with a strong personality. He produced thirty-four lithographs and etchings, in compositions similar to his pictorial work. He illustrated several books: Ne coupez pas, Mademoiselle, ou les erreurs des P. T.T. by Max Jacob (1920), Mouchoir des nuages by Tristan Tzara (1925), A Book concluding with as a wife has a cow a love story by Gertrude Stein (1925) and Denise by Raymond Radiguet (1926). He also did some portraits in lithography (Marcelle la Brunette, Marcelle la Blonde, Jean the Musician). Marcoussis went through Impressionism and Fauvism before arriving at Cubism. A virtuoso draughtsman, he worked as a caricaturist for several newspapers. He began printmaking in 1912, but devoted himself more intensely to it between 1930 and 1940: Aurelia by Gérard de Nerval (1930), Tables of Salvation (1931), Alcoholes by Apollinaire (1934–1935), plus a hundred portraits (Gertrude Stein, 1934; Miró, 1938). Villon, brother of Marcel Duchamp, was initiated into printmaking at the age of six by his grandfather, Émile Nicolle. Gifted in drawing, he worked for several newspapers and magazines. From 1899 he engraved for the publisher Edmond Sagot; among his first works are the series Minnie's Bath (1907) and Nudes (1909–1910). Already in the cubist period he made his Equilibrista (1913), one of the best prints of this style. In 1920 he made Tablero de ajedrez, a reproduction of the painting of the same name. The following year he illustrated the Architectures by Paul Valéry. Between 1923 and 1930 he made reproductions of works by Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, Renoir and Van Gogh to make ends meet. In 1939 his Three Orders was followed by series of landscapes, among which his Orchards series (1940–1941) stands out. Later, Cuarto de buey (1941) and Globo celeste (1944) stand out.