Screen Prints and Multiples

Original screen prints and other types of fine art prints can help enhance any room in your home while supporting your effort to tie an interior design together.

A screen print, also known as a silkscreen or serigraph, is made by cutting out pieces of paper (or textile) and placing them on a mesh sheath, or screen. With the help of a squeegee during the screen printing process, ink is forced through the uncovered areas of the mesh onto a sheet of paper. Each color must be screened separately. 

Originally used in the commercial printing industry for advertising and packaging, screen printing is closely associated with the Pop aesthetic. Andy Warhol was the first artist to use the process to create art, and his silkscreens and other prints rank among the highest priced prints on the market.

For legendary Abstract Expressionist artist Jackson Pollock, printing was crucial to the evolution of his abstraction. It was several years after he printed wild constellations of blobs and squiggles, using a small printing screen that he acquired during a brief stint at a silkscreen workshop, that he began splattering canvases with similar abstract imagery. 

For Jasper Johns, recognized as one of the most innovative, masterful print artists of all time, printmaking was ideal for exploring the ideas of repetition, seriality, patterning, semiotics, order and symbolism that intrigued him. His crosshatch prints (and paintings, for that matter) are a wonderful reference to the engraving process but also a brilliant conceptual update of Abstract Expressionist brushstroke, which Johns subverted again and again.

Remember, when it comes to arranging your screen prints and other wall art, hanging isn’t the only way to display your artworks. You can stand framed pieces and stretched canvases on an easel, a mantelpiece, floating shelves or on the floor leaning against a wall. This creates a casual look and also allows you to change your arrangements more easily and without damaging the wall.

Find authentic screen prints and multiples today on 1stDibs.