Cliché verre

The glass block print (also Diaphanradierung or cliché verre called ) is a graphical technique that was quite popular with French artists, especially in the second half of the 19th century. It is a hybrid of photography and hand drawing. The leaves are photographic prints created from a manually -made negative. Contrary to repeatedly expressed opinion of the medium is not a simple replacement for other techniques such as etching, lithography or engraving. The construction of the negative plate is relatively simple, but it requires the production of prints high level of technical skill to get clean sheets that are neither too bright nor too dark. A skilled photographer can - like a skilled printer in the print graphics area - affect the quality of the prints.

Especially in the group of landscape painters of Barbizon, a village in the Forest of Fontainebleau in France, this medium was very popular. Its heyday was short-lived. The medium quickly disappeared from the repertoire of the artist and it seems as if it had been experimentation in the first place, they animated verre to use the cliché. The most important artists that are Camille Corot (about 66 sheets in the art), Charles- Francois Daubigny (about 18 sheets in this technique, Jean -François Millet turned toward this technique (two leaves in this technique ), Eugène Delacroix ( 1 sheet in this technique ). During the 20th century experimented artists such as Picasso, Man Ray and Brassaï with the medium.

A glass plate with an opaque cover layer is verre To produce a Cliché (often dark paint, printing ink or collodion ) coated. You can on top of that are brightly colored and placed on a dark background to overlook the creative process better. The drawing with an etching needle to scratches in the coating of the glass plate. When drawing the lines appear through the exposed dark background in black and white. On the engraved sites, the plate is translucent. Overexposure to this plate on a light- sensitive glass plate coated or photo paper, the incised drawing appears as a positive, wrong- line drawing and may be reproduced in any photochemically in this way.