Nikolai Astrups tresnitt

Astrup arranged his first purely graphic art exhibition in Kunstnerforbundet in Oslo in 1918. Dagbladet’s art critic Jappe Nilssen wrote that Astrup mastered the art of woodcuts with superb technical skill. Nilssen mentioned in particular the illustrations Astrup made for Hans E. Kinck’s short story “Han som var så fæl til at fri” (The man who was always proposing), which was published in the Christmas magazine “Jul i Norge” in 1917. And aside from claiming that the effect in Waterfall and Glacier was “utterly Japanese”, Nilssen also provided an additional important observation: “Every single leaf is unique in and of itself, it is not multiplied via mechanical means through any press, but printed each one of them by the artist himself with his own hands; each individual [leaf] is therefore different from all the others”. This is a fundamental feature of Astrup’s graphic oeuvre.