What a serigraph is
Jerry Polizzi ·
A serigraph is a screenprint. Ink is pulled through a mesh where a stencil has left the holes open. Silkscreen, screenprint, and serigraph are three names for that process. Serigraph is the word the print market uses when the sheet was made as a fine-art edition. On this site the collection labels the same sheets silkscreens.
What you can see
Color often sits in flat areas. The ink can stand slightly proud of the paper, with a clean edge, and sometimes a faint cloth texture from the mesh. Arman, Hydra is a 1979 silkscreen on Arches Velin paper, printed at Studio Heinrici, published by Jackie Fine Arts, and signed and numbered 114/150. Yaacov Agam's Sparkling Night uses the same process for bands of color. The harbor scenes of Thomas McKnight are screenprints of the same kind.
How it differs from a lithograph
A lithograph is drawn with a greasy crayon or a wash on a flat stone or plate. A screenprint is a stencil. Both can be original prints. Both can be commercial reproductions. The pencil marks, the paper, and the publisher tell you which. The comparison is in how to tell a lithograph from a reproduction, and the abbreviations are in what the pencil marks mean.
A screenprinted poster
A film poster can be printed through a screen and still be a poster. The process is not the proof. An artist's screenprint carries a pencil signature and an edition number in the margin. A poster carries a printed signature, a copyright line, or no inscription in the paper at all.
These notes are the advice we give across the counter. They are not an appraisal and not a conservation report.
Questions
Is a serigraph an original print?
When the artist made the stencils, or directed them, and signed the impression, it is an original print. A screenprint of someone else's painting, issued as a poster, is a reproduction. The word on the label is not enough.
Why do some labels say silkscreen and some say serigraph?
They name the same stencil process. Silkscreen and screenprint are the workshop words. Serigraph is the market word for a fine-art impression. This site uses silkscreen in the collection.
Is thick ink a problem?
Screenprint ink often sits on the surface, and that thickness is part of the process. Cracks or flakes in that layer are condition. If the surface is lifting, bring the sheet in before it is pressed into a frame.