Linocut is relief printmaking from carved linoleum, cheaper and easier than woodcut. Learn its history from 1905 to Picasso's reduction technique and today.
In 1959, Pablo Picasso walked into the studio of his printer Hidalgo Arnéra in Vallauris, France, and solved a problem that had frustrated him for months. He wanted to make multi-color linocut prints, but aligning separate blocks for each color was producing registration errors that ruined the results. His solution was to use a single block of linoleum, printing the lightest color first, then carving away more of the block and printing the next color on top, repeating until the darkest color was printed last. The block was destroyed in the process. There was no going back. This technique, now called the reduction linocut, is one of the most important innovations in 20th-century printmaking, and it came from a man who was primarily a painter working in a medium most serious printmakers considered a beginner's material.
Linocut is a relief printmaking technique in which a design is carved into a sheet of linoleum, the raised (uncarved) areas are inked with a roller, and the block is pressed onto paper to produce the image. It is a variant of woodcut, using linoleum instead of wood as the printing surface. Linoleum is softer, cheaper, and easier to carve than wood, which made linocut accessible to artists who lacked specialized woodcarving tools or training. The technique emerged in the first decade of the 20th century and was adopted by modernist artists, the Grosvenor School in London, and Pablo Picasso, who transformed it from a teaching medium into a serious printmaking art form.
This entry covers what linocut is, how it developed, which artists defined it, and how the reduction technique changed everything. If you think linocut is a school art project, Picasso's reduction prints will change your mind.
Linocut works on the same principle as all relief printing: the artist carves away the areas that should not print, leaving the image raised on the surface. The block is inked with a brayer (a rubber roller), which applies ink only to the raised areas. Paper is placed on the inked block and pressure is applied, either by hand (using a baren or the back of a spoon) or by running the block through a printing press. The ink transfers from the raised areas to the paper, producing the image.
Linoleum, invented by Frederick Walton in 1863, is made from linseed oil, cork dust, and resins pressed onto a burlap backing. It was originally a floor covering. The material is soft enough to carve with gouges and knives, without the grain that makes woodcarving difficult. Linoleum has no grain direction, so cuts can go any way without splitting or tearing. This allows smoother curves and more fluid lines than wood, which is one reason artists preferred it for certain kinds of imagery.
Multi-color linocuts can be made in two ways. The traditional method uses a separate block for each color, requiring careful registration to align the colors on the paper. The reduction method, pioneered by Picasso, uses a single block: the artist prints the lightest color, carves away more of the block, prints the next color on top of the first, and repeats until the darkest color is printed. The block is progressively destroyed, so the edition size is fixed by the number of prints made at the first stage. You cannot go back and print more.
Linocut is the youngest major printmaking technique. Linoleum itself was not invented until 1863, and it took several decades before artists recognized its potential as a printing surface. The first known artistic use of linoleum for printmaking was by Vojtěch Preissig, a Czech émigré who displayed "linoleum art" in New York City in 1911. Preissig was a graphic designer and printmaker who saw that linoleum's softness and lack of grain made it suitable for bold, graphic imagery.
In the 1920s and 1930s, linocut was adopted by the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London, which became the technique's most important early center. Claude Flight, who taught at the Grosvenor School from 1926, championed linocut as a modern, democratic medium suited to the dynamism of contemporary urban life. Flight's students, including Sybil Andrews, Cyril Power, and Lill Tschudi, produced linocuts of speeding cars, tube trains, and sporting events that captured the energy of interwar London. The Grosvenor School artists typically used multiple blocks for color, carving each block to print a different color layer.
In the United States, Pedro Joseph de Lemos published methods for linocut in art schools in the late 1920s, introducing techniques for color linocuts including the printing of the key block first. Walter Inglis Anderson created the first large-scale color linocuts by an American artist around 1943-1945, exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum in 1949.
Picasso's involvement with linocut began in the 1950s. He was living in Vallauris and needed to produce posters for local events, including bullfights and pottery exhibitions. Linocut was faster and cheaper than other print methods, and the bold, simplified forms it produced suited his style. Between 1959 and 1968, Picasso produced approximately 200 linocuts, including the reduction prints that revolutionized the technique. A 2024 catalogue raisonné of Picasso's linocuts by Miguel Orozco documented the full range of this work. The Victoria and Albert Museum published Linocuts: A History by Gill Saunders in 2024 as part of its printmaking series, the most comprehensive survey of the medium to date.
Flight was the teacher and promoter who made linocut a modernist medium. At the Grosvenor School, he taught his students to carve directly into the linoleum without preliminary drawing, embracing the spontaneity and roughness of the cut. His own linocuts, like Speed (1932) and Summer (c. 1933), capture the rhythm of urban life with bold color and simplified forms. Flight's book The Art and Craft of Lino Cutting and Printing (1934) was the first instructional manual on the technique.
Andrews was the most accomplished of the Grosvenor School linocutters. Her Motorists (1929, Glenbow Museum) shows two figures in a speeding car, the wind and motion expressed through angular, interlocking color shapes. Bringing in the Boat (1933) and Racing (1934) show her ability to compress complex action into bold, dynamic compositions. Andrews used multiple blocks for color, typically four or five, with each block carved to print a specific color area.
Power, another Grosvenor School artist, is best known for his images of the London Underground. The Tube Station (1932) and The Escalator (1930) show commuters descending into and rising from the tube, their bodies simplified into curves and diagonals that convey the mechanical rhythm of the underground. Power's linocuts are held in the collections of the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Picasso transformed linocut from a teaching medium into a major art form. His Jacqueline with Glossy Hair (1962) was printed in eight states, each one a step in the reduction process. The Harvard Art Museums hold a complete set of proofs showing how Picasso and Arnéra built the image layer by layer, cutting away more of the block with each color. Still Life under the Lamp (1962) and Portrait of Jacqueline with Hat (1962) are among his most celebrated linocuts. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds the Kramer Collection of Picasso linocuts, 147 works documented in a 1985 publication. Read about the Harvard exhibition at Harvard Art Museums.
Méndez was a Mexican printmaker and member of the Taller de Gráfica Popular, a printmaking collective founded in 1937 that used linocut and woodcut for political communication. Méndez's linocuts documented labor struggles, anti-fascist resistance, and Mexican rural life. His work demonstrates that linocut's accessibility, cheap materials, and bold graphic quality made it an effective medium for political art, a tradition that continues in print collectives worldwide.
You need a sheet of linoleum (battleship gray linoleum is the standard), carving gouges (V-shaped for fine lines, U-shaped for broader areas), a brayer (ink roller), relief printing ink, and paper. Begin by drawing your design on the linoleum in pencil or marker. Remember that the image will be reversed when printed. Carve away the areas you want to remain white (the color of the paper). The raised areas will print.
For a single-color linocut, ink the block with the brayer, place paper on top, and apply pressure with a baren, spoon, or printing press. Pull the paper off the block to reveal the print.
For a reduction linocut, plan your colors from lightest to darkest. Print the first (lightest) color from the uncut or minimally cut block. Then carve away the areas that should remain that color. Ink the block with the second color and print on top of the first layer. Continue carving and printing until the darkest color is applied. You must print the full edition at each stage, because the block is destroyed as you go. There is no way to make more prints after the process is complete.
Linocut is a form of relief printing, the same category as woodcut and wood engraving. The main difference between linocut and woodcut is the material: linoleum is softer, cheaper, and has no grain, making it easier to carve but producing a different surface quality. Screen printing is another relief-adjacent technique used for bold, graphic imagery. Etching and engraving are intaglio techniques, where the image is printed from incised rather than raised surfaces.
For more on printmaking traditions, read our entry on woodcut or explore our guide on how to read a painting.
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London holds the largest collection of Grosvenor School linocuts, including works by Andrews, Power, and Flight. The British Museum also holds significant Grosvenor School prints. Picasso's linocuts are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Museu Picasso in Barcelona. The Minneapolis Institute of Art holds proof states from Picasso's Le Banderillero that show the reduction process step by step.
For contemporary linocut, look for exhibitions of political print collectives like the Taller de Gráfica Popular tradition in Mexico or Justseeds Artists' Cooperative in the United States. For more on related print techniques, read our entries on woodcut and screen printing, or explore our post on reading a painting.
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