Editor’s Note: This information was compiled by organizers of “Modern Masters: 20th Century Prints.”

Modernism, which occurred throughout the majority of the 20th century, actually began in the late 19th century. Artists began to question the notion of imitating nature and self-consciously emphasized the materials of painting – leaving visible brush strokes, areas of blank canvas and purposefully distorting points of view and perspective – reminding viewers that ultimately painting can never truly mimic nature.

The development of photography also forced re-evaluation of the representational nature of painting.

Artistic movements such as Cubism, Fauvism and Expressionism ushered in the early decades of the 20th century. Fauvist Henri Matisse and Cubist Pablo Picasso both were leaders in deconstructing the notion that art needed to imitate nature or “look real.”

By the 1910s, artists such as Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian achieved pure abstraction, reducing forms to expressive lines and blocks of color. The full force of European modernism was presented to shocked Americans in the famous Armory Show of 1913 in New York City. Under the influence of this exhibition, the early work of such Americans as Joseph Stella and Charles Demuth revealed new abstract styles.

In the early 1920s, Dadaism, which had been popular during World War I, led to Surrealism, in which the theories of Freudian psychology inspired depictions of dreams and the unconscious. Artists such as Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Man Ray and Roberto Matta painted unnerving, illogical scenes that allowed the unconscious to express itself.

During the 1940s and ’50s, artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning became involved in Abstract Expressionism. This American movement took the lead as the reigning international artistic style, shunning representational and figurative painting. Critic Harold Rosenberg described the style by saying, “At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.”

The Pop Art movement of the 1950s and ’60s utilized an aesthetic based on the mass-produced artifacts of urban culture, rejecting the concepts of beauty and ugliness. In the spirit of consumerism, many worked in bold color palettes found in advertisements. More commercialized methods, such as silkscreening, also became very popular and downplayed the artist’s touch. Its major practitioners included Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg.

During the 1960s, other non-objective styles of painting and sculpture flourished along with Pop Art. A few of these movements were Op Art, the art of optical illusion; Minimalism, practiced by Donald Judd; and Color field painting, embraced by Larry Zox.

These artistic movements of the ’60s ushered in Postmodernism, which sought to push away from the ideas and concepts associated with Modern art. During the latter decades of the twentieth century, no single school or style dominated either European or American art. Instead, artists continued to seek numerous avenues of individual expression. Many combined photography, collage and a variety of materials together in single works.

“Modern Masters: Twentieth Century Prints” provides a condensed overview of the many styles that were popularized by these movements that defined the artistic landscape of the twentieth century.

Grouped together, the works in this exhibition also explore an array of printmaking techniques and how they have evolved over the years.