Föreningen Original-Träsnitt. Grafik och grafiker på ett tidigt modernistiskt konstfält

Sammanfattning: This thesis is about Föreningen Original-Träsnitt, which was founded in 1912, at a time when new photographic methods of image reproduction contributed to differentiation of graphic visual culture in Sweden and Europe. In the field of art a notion was spread that now when a picture could be reproduced mechanically, there was no need for the wood engraving, the technique which had been used for art pictures and illustrations in book, magazines and newspapers. Now demands of special type of originality began to arise into eh field of art. A movement striving tom promote the ?original print? was formed in Europe. This movement, which include The Swedish Society of Original Wood Engraves, defined ?original print? as a picture that was created by the same person in every step of production. With regards to woodcut, this meant that the same person should have designed, cut and most preferably even printed the picture. The 1910´s was a decade when different modernistic ideals of art were launched in Sweden. The fact that also the Swedish woodcut was a medium of an early modernistic syntax has hardly been noticed before. In this thesis is presented the pictorial styles that were applied by The Swedish Society of Original Wood Engravers, and in which contexts their prints were exhibited and received. I also give an idea about the conditions under which artistes of this time and place are working, and what it could be like to appear in public, especially as a women artist.