A screen print is a print made through the process of
screen printing, in which paint is forced through a mesh screen
stretched over a wooden frame.
The technique is also referred to as silkscreen printing, since
early screens were made exclusively of silk. Today, screens are
also made of cotton, nylon, and metal.
To produce a screen print, an artist applies varnish or wax
to a screen wherever he or she does not want the paint to pass
through (the negative).
The artist then places the screen over a piece of paper and
uses a rubber blade to force paint through the unvarnished or
unwaxed areas of the mesh. This creates the positive design.
Screen printing was invented around 1900, but it didn’t become
widely used as a fine art medium until the Pop artists
took it up in the 1960s.
A member of that group, Andy Warhol (1928-87), created
a series of screen prints of Campbell’s Soup cans, one of which
sold for $9 million in 2010.