Éric Seydoux’s L’Atelier in the Landscape of Fine Art Screenprinting in France 1974-2013

Cécile Pocheau-Lesteven

In 1983, Françoise Woimant, curator in charge of contemporary prints at the Bibliothèque nationale (National Library), published the “Répertoire des ateliers de sérigraphie d’art en France” (Directory of Fine Art Screenprinting Workshops in France) in the magazine Les Nouvelles de l’Estampe.1 This article came out a few years after the publication of the directories of intaglio workshops2 and lithog-raphy printers3 in France. The author justifies the urgent need for this new directory by the increasingly large number of screenprints entering the BnF’s collections of original prints between 1970 and 1983. Compiling a list of the workshops was the occasion for her put together a brief yet concise panorama of fine art editions printed in silkscreen in France.4 A short historical survey written by Sylvie Bacot5 completed the picture. These two introductory texts to the directory help to make up for the absence of comprehensive studies of screen-printing in France, a situation deplored by the authors. They’re even more precious today given that research on the subject has hardly advanced since they were published.

These two texts highlight several remarkable characteristics of the history of screenprinting. Having become “a rich and fertile contem-porary printmaking technique” within the space of two decades, it remains intrinsically connected to its industrial origins. In addition to