movement of the 1980’s and resolutely oriented towards alternative publications and graphzines.”

The turning point of the 1990’s

Beginning in the 1990’s, the context of fine art printing in France evolved considerably. Faced with the collapse of the art market which had an impact on the printmaking industry, faced also with collectors’ mistrust of the multiple, which can be partly explained by unscrupu-lous print publishers having flooded the market with huge editions of mediocre works often done in silkscreen, printers and fine art publishers working in all the techniques organized amongst them-selves. Specialized salons were set up, namely the Saga (Salon des arts graphiques et de l’édition d’art/Salon of Graphic Art and Fine Art Prints), which took place from 1987 until 1999, as were other events such as “Le Mois de l’estampe à Paris” (Print Month in Paris), which took place every two years from 1997 until 2005. Print shops opened exhibition spaces and participated actively in the sections dedicated to editioned prints at the big international contemporary art fairs. The association “Les Ateliers Estampes Originales Contemporaines” (Original Contemporary Print Workshops), of which Éric Seydoux was one of the founding members, was created in 1994. Print shops and publishers began reducing their production of editioned prints and moved towards producing one-of-a-kind prints, thereby insisting upon the notion of original creation. To remain viable as producers and publishers of original works, fine art print shops had to strive for excellence and cultivate their uniqueness. In the words of lithography printer Michael Woolworth, they had to “aim to make the best possible finished product by finding a language specific to the medium with each artist rather than making reproductions of their existing works.”8

In the early 1990’s, Éric Seydoux oriented his activity towards con-temporary art, offering his technical expertise, his inventiveness and his insatiable passion for screenprinting to artists. He invited them to use the process to create one-of-a-kind artworks, accepting all the challenges and printing on all kinds of non-traditional surfaces such as glass, metal and canvas. Up until the end of his career in 2012, artists of different generations and sensibilities would renew their approach to making art thanks to him. The testimonials of Pierre Buraglio, Paul Cox, Christophe Cuzin, Shirley Jaffe, Frédérique