Being Bold In Art

If you think of it, being bold in art is not new, we know quite a few artists from old times, who had the courage to go against social requirements and the opinion of society. The biggest problem, as always, is that society can't keep up with artists and it takes time to digest and understand new trends and styles. Many have paid a really high price for being bold and courageous and sticking to their belief and vision in art. Some had been penniless and starving in cold all their lives and only became famous post mortem.

Being bold in art.jpg

So many times I'm asking myself, what would those, most famous artists, or inventors say if you could bring them back to life for a week or two and show them how much their art, music or invention is valued today, or how much their work had contributed to get where humanity is today.

Anyway, before I digress, let me show you something out of the box, that some may not even consider art.

There were three works on the wall, one beneath the other and they were quite high, so I could not take a better shot, but you can see them as it is I suppose.

The 1st from the top wown is Ernő Grünbaum - Modern Christ - linocut on paper, which is quite bald as religion was sacred (still should be but people are not so strict these days anymore), and I bet this work met some criticism back in its days.

The 2nd is Hans Mattis Teutsch - Composition Sketch - pencil on paper. You don't usually see sketches exhibited, unless some works of a very famous artist get discovered decades, centuries after their passing.

The 3rd is Hans Mattis Teutsch - Landscape - linocut on paper. I've seen quite a lot of linocuts, but never a landscape. To be honest, good thing there was a label with the details as I would have never guessed what it is and most likely I'm not the only one in this situation.

In my last art post I posted a self-portrait, that the author called pathetic. I said it takes courage to do such thing especially that the graphics was created 100 years ago, when the society was nowhere near to being open minded and ready to see something new, out of the box.

20251113_114003(0)a.JPG

Hans Mattis Teutsch - Composition Sketch - pencil on paper

The 1st one (top) is Jenő Tarján Simkovics - Contemplating - etching on paper.
The 2nd one (bottom) is Lajos Varga Nándor - Adam and Eve - etching on paper.

Etching on paper is a printmaking technique where an image is incised onto a metal plate, usually copper or zinc, using acid. The plate is then inked and pressed onto paper to create a print. - Presearch AI

Etching on paper is not very rare, but it's not very common either. I've seen a few works, but it's not a genre the majority of artists choose to use. I don't have evidence to back up what I'm saying, but from previous experience, I think it's more rare than linocut.

These are the cropped images of the two artworks. None of them were big, so adding a white paper frame in these cases is a very smart solution as otherwise it would ruin the whole experience. I'd love to see this technique used and I'm going to search for a video tutorial to learn more about it, but looking at the artworks, it can't be easy, so i value them both a lot.