Printed: images in colonial Australia 1801 – 1901 [with] Printed: images by Australian artists 1885 – 1955 [and] Printed: images by Australian Artists 1942 – 2020

Canberra : National Gallery of Australia, 2007 – 2021. Three volumes, quarto, pictorial boards in dustjackets, light handling wear to the dustjacket of the second volume, a few spots of foxing, otherwise fine, pp. 294; 328; 416, extensively illustrated in colour, a very good set.

The complete set of Roger Butler’s comprehensive survey of printmaking in Australia.

The first volume : ‘This volume follows printmaking through a seventy-year period, from the latter part of the nineteenth century as the print, freed from its reproductive bonds, became a vehicle for pure artistic expression; through the great social and political traumas of the first half of the twentieth century, when the print was co-opted to carry a political message; and concludes in the immediate postwar years with prints that signal the artists’ search for meaning and an awareness of self’ – the publisher

The second volume : ‘This volume follows printmaking through a seventy-year period, from the latter part of the nineteenth century as the print, freed from its reproductive bonds, became a vehicle for pure artistic expression; through the great social and political traumas of the first half of the twentieth century, when the print was co-opted to carry a political message; and concludes in the immediate postwar years with prints that signal the artists’ search for meaning and an awareness of self’ – the publisher

The third volume : Printed: Images by Australian artists 1942 — 2020 traces the history of printmaking by Australian artists during an era of dramatic changes in Australian society and the visual arts. Arranged in three sections, it begins with the innovative wartime policy initiatives of the Commonwealth. Reconstruction Scheme which laid the groundwork for crucial development in the arts. In this period emigre artists and Australian artists returning home helped established printmaking societies, art galleries and publishers — which underpinned the growing popularity of this most democratic of art forms.

The second section explores the rise of political and social posters, which became one of the most dynamic forms of print practice in the 1970s and 1980s, and prints by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists which have been at the forefront of Australian art since the 1970s. The book’s final section discusses the continuing responses by printmakers to key concerns of our time, focusing on the themes of land and identity.