This week’s auctions for Impressionist and Modern art can leave a prospective collector feeling dizzy with sticker shock. In which case, collecting prints might be the way to go — and the International Fine Prints Dealers Association fair at the Seventh Regiment Armory amply demonstrated not only how beautiful, but how deeply expressive prints can be.

The largest print fair in the country, and perhaps the world, the fair is a feast of different periods and styles. “Within this space, you can see 500 years of imagery,” the London dealer Ian McKenzie marveled the other day. And it’s true: The wares ran the gamut from Old Masters, through Impressionism, Symbolism, Surrealism, and German Expressionism, to post-war and contemporary art –– not to mention a large selection of Japanese woodcuts.

Many of the most interesting works in the fair were from the late 19th and early 20th centuries –– a period of tremendous artistic ferment and one in which prints were finally recognized as works of art in themselves, rather than merely a means of reproduction.

Some artists used prints, because they were produced in multiples, as a medium for conveying social messages. Several dealers at the fair, for instance, showed works by Käthe Kollwitz, a German Expressionist whose greatest accomplishments were in printmaking.

Kollwitz had more than one reason for becoming a printmaker, the co-director of Galerie St. Etienne, Jane Kallir, explained. “She was a woman, and there was less competition: She could be the foremost printmaker in Germany,” Ms. Kallir said. “Also, with printmaking, she could reach the working class.” Kollwitz’s etchings, like “Mother With Dead Child” and “Sick Woman and Her Children,” show heart-wrenching scenes of poverty and suffering. Some were specific statements of political protest: “Poster Against Paragraph 218” ––that being Germany’s anti-abortion law –– shows a tired and sunkencheeked woman, pregnant, carrying an infant, and holding another small child by the hand.

Artists continue to use the stark aesthetic of woodblock prints for political work. Galerie St. Etienne’s booth showed a woodblock print by Sue Coe, who is a sort of modern-day Kollwitz and the only contemporary artist that the gallery represents. “Car Bomb” ––which shows a mother protecting her child in the foreground, and an exploding car in the background –– is from a series of woodcuts Ms. Coe did based on a month’s worth of news headlines. Although the print on sale this weekend was listed at $500, Ms. Kallir said that Ms. Coe often sells her work inexpensively. “Sue, like Kollwitz, really tries to make her work accessible to everybody,” Ms. Kallir said.

There were classic images, like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s “Divan Japonais,” showing the red-haired dancer Jane Avril in the audience at the music hall. Mr. McKenzie showed a copy that is particularly pristine, having never actually been used as a poster. “Even though it’s a common image, I thought I’d show it because it is such a good example,” he said. “There is a connoisseurship here. People can see the difference between a ropy, dog-eared version that’s been through the works and one that’s never been touched.”

Most exciting to discover were beautiful pieces by lesser-known artists, like Alfredo Müller, who was influenced by Lautrec. His work has elements of Impressionism, Art Nouveau, and Symbolism. The dealer Joel Berquist of Palo Alto, Calif., had a copy of “After the Bath,” which looks a little like a Degas, but with a more somber aspect particular to its form, a color etching.

The fair fortuitously overlapped with the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibition dedicated to the dealer Ambroise Vollard, who published many artist books. Mr. Berquist had a print by Henri Martin from one of Vollard’s books, while Frederick Mulder of London had 24 impressions from Picasso’s Vollard Suite –– a set of 100 engravings commissioned by the dealer and intended to illustrate a two-volume book. On Saturday morning, the fair presented a roundtable discussion on Vollard’s influence on printmaking.

It can be argued that prints evoke dark moods more effectively than painting, since color is inherently visually pleasing. The work of the contemporary artists represented by Pratt Contemporary Art/Pratt Editions from Kent, England — Marcus Rees Roberts, Derek Mawudoku, and Ana Maria Pacheco –– makes a good case in point. Ms. Pacheco’s images of strange creatures, often with human bodies and animal heads, are simultaneously grotesque and bewitching: They’re like Goya (at his darkest, in his etchings) meets Maurice Sendak. Ms. Pacheco, who is influenced by myths and folk stories, uses the prints as studies for her sculptures, although, judging from photographs of the sculptures, the prints are actually more powerful. You probably wouldn’t want to hang one in your bedroom, but they show a distinctive artist working out ideas in a medium perfectly suited to her fervid imagination.