Printmaking and street art

Street art, a distinct way of artistic expression born in America in the 1960s, has fed on many different disciplines of art throughout its evolution and started to gradually change and expand its former philosophical values and priorities. During this period, printmaking art has played a crucial role in production processes of street artists who made experiments with numerous methods from many artistic disciplines, in a way suitable to the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary art. In the first part, it has been made a comprehensive discussion on public space with its historical transformation, models and characteristics in order to give a better understanding of the extent and the meaning of today's street art. Secondly, after retailing the nationalization period of art, it has been inclusively discussed the transformation of graffiti art emerged in America in the 1960s into street art. Later on, the discussions on street art getting institutional that has started when the works on streets were hung on the white walls of galleries/museums and when street art no longer belonged merely to the streets, as well as discussions on vandalism have also been assessed in the study. In the final part where the relations between street art and printmaking art have been discussed, the common grounds that bring street art and printmaking art, being two artistic disciplines different from each other, close together have been emphasized after drawing a thorough frame about printmaking art. By adducing some works by the street artists who follow in the printmaking's footsteps, it has been underlined how much important and powerful the impacts of printmaking on street art and its artists were, and that street art became gradually stronger and, therefore, much more widespread and popular around the world as it interacted with the art of printmaking. Key Words: Street Art, Graffiti, Printmaking Art.