Fine art prints are created in strictly limited editions - 20 or 30 or maybe 50 - and are always based on an image created specifically to be made into an edition. After all, our closest connection to the printed image is through mass-produced newspapers, magazines and books, and many people don’t realize that even though prints are editions, they start with an original image created by an artist with the intent of reproducing it in a small batch. An artist takes a material like stone, metal, wood or wax, carves, incises, draws or otherwise marks it with an image, inks or paints it and then transfers the image to a piece of paper or other material.įine art prints are frequently confused with their more commercial counterparts. Printmaking is the transfer of an image from one surface to another.
Pursued in the 1960s and ’70s, largely by Pop artists drawn to its associations with mass production, advertising, packaging and seriality, as well as those challenging the primacy of the Abstract Expressionist brushstroke, printmaking was embraced in the 1980s by painters and conceptual artists ranging from David Salle and Elizabeth Murray to Adrian Piper and Sherrie Levine. Decorating with fine art prints - whether they’re figurative prints, abstract prints or another variety - has always been a practical way of bringing a space to life as well as bringing works by an artist you love into your home.
