While the avant-garde’s interest in screenprinting was an essentially French phenomenon in the 1950’s, it took off in a spectacular way in the United States and in Europe beginning in 1960 when American and European pop artists discovered the tremendous potential of a technique largely used for advertising. They began using the process not only to create prints but also to create paintings and sculptures.

In France, Alain Jacquet made his emblematic Déjeuner sur l’herbe with the commercial printer Lioté in 1964. This monumental print (175 × 196 cm) revisits Edouard Manet’s famous painting via screenprint-ing. The scene was recreated using photography (the artist had his friends pose, including the renowned art critic Pierre Restany). The image was then enlarged and printed on to canvas for an edition of 90 copies, and on paper for an edition of 30. As a hybrid composi-tion, this inaugural work of Mec’Art, or Mechanical Art, questions the notions of reproduction, originality and artistic interpretation. A proof of Déjeuner sur l’herbe purchased by the BN (National Library) in 1983 was chosen by Françoise Woimant to be reproduced on the first page of her directory.

In France in the 1960’s, political and satirical posters printed at the Atelier populaire of the Fine Arts School of Paris during the events of May 1968 would also largely contribute to familiarize a genera-tion of young artists with screenprinting. At the demand of the artist Guy de Rougemont, Éric Seydoux, who at the time was an appren-tice at Paris-Arts, set up the Atelier populaire in a feverish rush with extremely rudimentary equipment: “The screens were prepared directly with an adhesive paste or Drawing Gum, then clamped to ordinary tables using door hinges”, thus proving that even when reduced to its most elemental means, the screenprinting process remains an extraordinary means of expression.

Created in 1963 and 1965 respectively, Michel Caza’s workshop and the commercial print shop Publicité Marquet both worked with a generation of artists from the “new figuration” movement. They’d moved away from abstraction that had been predominant in the 1950’s. Michel Caza, founder of the French Screenprint Association in 1959, authored manuals on screenprinting techniques which brought him international scientific recognition. In 1970, he printed Gérard Fromanger’s portfolio of 20 screenprints, Le Rouge (Red), which was a response to the events of May 1968 using press photographs taken by Elie Kagan and Horace. Jacques Marquet, whose workshop was more of a commercial screenprint shop, worked with abstract artists from Denise René’s gallery as well as with “new figuration” artists and illustrators, namely Topor, Folon, Desclozaux and Sempé.