Michael Knigin On Sale

Michael Knigin, painter, printmaker, muralist, photographer, and teacher, was born in Brooklyn, New York on December 9, 1942. He received his BFA in 1966 from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia. In 1964 he was awarded a Ford Foundation Grant, which enabled him to study printmaking at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop and collaborate with Rufino Tamayo. Knigin was a full professor at the Pratt Graphic Center in Manhattan between 1967 and 2003. From 1968 through 1972, he also co-owned and directed the Chiron Press where he worked with Andy Warhol, Louise Nevelson, Kenneth Noland, Larry Poons, and Tom Wesselman. In 1974, he served as Art and Technical Director of the Burston Graphics Art Centre in Jerusalem. In 1988, Knigin was appointed to the NASA Art Team and was sent to the Kennedy Space Center to visually interpret the launch of the space shuttle Discovery. In 1991, Nasa recalled him to interpret the touchdown of the space shuttle Atlantis. Knigin's works were exhibited widely and are in numerous permanent collections including the Albright-Knox Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Carnegie Mellon Institute, Cooper Hewitt Museum, Library of Congress, McNay Museum, Mexico City Museum of Modern Art, Portland Museum of Art, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Worchester Museum of Art. With Murray Zimiles, Knigin co-authored The Technique of Fine Art Lithography in 1969, and Contemporary Lithographic Workshops around the World in 1974. Michael J. Knigin died on January 19, 2011.

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.

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.

Printmaking is the transfer of an image from one surface to another. 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.

Fine art prints are frequently confused with their more commercial counterparts. 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. 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.

Many people think of revered Dutch artist Rembrandt as a painter but may not know that he was a printmaker as well. His prints have been preserved in time along with the work of other celebrated printmakers such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol. These fine art prints are still highly sought after by collectors.

“It’s another tool in the artist’s toolbox, just like painting or sculpture or anything else that an artist uses in the service of mark making or expressing him- or herself,” says International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) vice president Betsy Senior, of New York’s Betsy Senior Fine Art, Inc.

Because artist’s editions tend to be more affordable and available than his or her unique works, they’re more accessible and can be a great opportunity to bring a variety of colors, textures and shapes into a space.

For tight corners, select small fine art prints as opposed to the oversized bold piece you’ll hang as a focal point in the dining area. But be careful not to choose something that is too big for your space. And feel free to lean into it if need be — not every work needs picture-hanging hooks. Leaning a larger fine art print against the wall behind a bookcase can add a stylish installation-type dynamic to your living room. (Read more about how to arrange wall art here.)

Find fine art prints for sale on 1stDibs today.