A linocut is a print made from a sheet of linoleum, the material that once covered kitchen floors. The artist cuts away every part that should stay white, rolls ink over the raised surface that remains, and presses paper onto it.
Printmakers call this a relief print, because the image comes from the parts of the block that stand up, as on a rubber stamp. The woodcut, its older cousin, works the same way with a plank of wood.
The difference lies in the cutting. Wood has a grain that the carver must follow at every stroke, while linoleum has no grain at all, so the knife can turn in any direction.
The sheet is soft and cheap as well. Those two qualities made its success and its bad name. It spread among amateurs as well as artists in the twentieth century, and for a long time many professionals dismissed it as too easy to require real skill.
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A floor covering born from a pot of oil
Its story starts far from art…
What You'll Discover
How a linocut is cut, inked and printed.
A teacher who wanted art in ordinary homes.
What Matisse feared about his black pages.
Why a Mexican workshop chose linoleum.
The price Picasso paid for his shortcut.