Art is and remains pure craftsmanship. Our company strives to contribute properly to this unique craftsmanship and to preserve it, which is why we introduced the ‘Certified Art Giclée’ quality mark in 2003. The Certified Art Giclée™ quality mark is the pre-eminent European standard for original limited giclée fine art printing editions. Thanks to the Certified Art Giclée™ a distinction is created between original, high-grade, and valuable museum quality giclées and the inkjet prints of often disappointing quality, which are nonetheless offered under the name of giclée. The Certified Art Giclée™ logo guarantees consumers, artists, galleries, and museums the very highest quality and a long lifespan of the relevant giclées, which are always accompanied by a certificate of authenticity. Certified Art Giclée™ also guarantees that there will never be more prints made than agreed with the artist. If it concerns an edition of twenty-five, then we shall never make more than twenty-five.
Feel free to contact us 036-536 88 75
Fine Art Prints
Giclée prints
Giclée prints are qualitative tours the force
Giclée prints are high-grade reproductions of works of art. The giclée fine art print is a contemporary digital printing technique which meets the highest requirements set for graphic work by artists, museums, and art collectors. Just like the Fine Art print and the photo print, the giclée fine art print has conquered an equivalent position in the art world among the better known traditional graphic arts such as the etching, silkscreen, and lithography.
Various museums in the world exhibit giclées instead of the original works of art when the originals are too vulnerable to be displayed. This testifies to the giclée as a quality tour the force, provided all requirements set by museums are satisfied, including the ISO 9706 and NEN2728 standards, and provided the giclées are produced in a high-quality process.
- Printen on Demand
- Guarantee on colourfastness and durability
- Choice of many materials
- Relatively low start-up costs
- Environmentally friendly process
- Stabilised production process
We guarantee the highest quality of giclée prints
Unfortunately, there is still an uncontrolled growth of offerors that abuse the name of giclée and offer you bargain prints on canvas and paper, most of which are of a lamentably poor quality: prints showing stripes, produced with cheap inks and materials, which lack depth of color and do not last very long. Manufactured on printers with inks destined for the commercial graphics market that are not colorfast and not durable.
Real giclée prints are manufactured with an enormously high resolution (at least 1140 dpi to 2880 dpi) and are printed with costly archival inks on acid-free materials. The canvases and types of paper are specially provided with a coating which ensures that the inks are not degraded. After having been produced, the canvas giclée prints are provided with a UV-resistant varnish or a UV top coating so that Re-Art can give a lifetime guarantee.
The giclée came to be viewed in an unfavorable light because galleries experienced problems after having sold giclée prints that discolored after just a few months, which resulted in dissatisfied customers. This is due to all the cheap offerors who also want to get a piece of the pie in this market.
In order to stop this proliferation and preserve the quality, Re-Art, in 2003, following on from the American Tru Giclée, created the ‘Certified Art Giclée’ quality mark. With this quality product and quality mark Re-Art managed to restore trust within the art world. Poor prints or prints that are not very durable can cause considerable damage to you as an artist. If you as an artist set stringent standards for your art works, you should also set stringent standards for the supplier of your giclée prints.
What is a giclée?
A giclée is nothing else than an inkjet print, printed with archival inks on acid-free materials in a screenless fineness. Giclée comes from the French verb gicler which means squirt or spray. In this technique high-grade inks are applied in different color layers on special fine art paper, photo paper or canvas.
Giclée prints have its origin in the United States at the end of the 1980s. Via the Scitex IRIS 3024 printer, introduced in 1987, it became possible for the first time to send digital files via an Apple computer to this printer and print them. Artists realized at once that this made it possible to print limited editions of their original art works. Before then this was only reserved for artists who used the traditional graphic methods such as silkscreen, lithography or etching.
The quality of these giclée prints was not really great and the colors faded when exposed to UV light. Only many years later were special water-borne archival inks made, which ensure long durability. Marcel Salome, the owner of Re-Art, experimented as early as in the 1990s with the IRIS 3024 printers for printing art works and photos and was hence a pioneer in the field of giclée printing in the Netherlands. We can safely say that Re-Art has given publicity to the name of ‘giclée’ in the Netherlands.
“We don’t sell products which we ourselves do not support wholeheartedly”
Certified Art Giclée™
The durability of a Certified Art Giclée™ is at least one hundred years, so that it attains the archival standard set by the ‘Fine Art Trade Guild’.
The Certified Art Giclée is always printed with waterproof archival pigment inks and on acid-free and OBA-free materials. These materials are provided with an invisible coating that brings about a chemical reaction between the ink and the material. The minimum resolution is 1440 dpi, so that the prints are screenless and have an unprecedented level of detail.
The Certified Art Giclée is always provided with a visible number and a signature applied by the artist. So, the signature is not printed along. The accompanying certificate is provided with a number and signature and is also co-signed by the master printer. This certificate also states the edition including the EA’s.
Certified Art Giclée gives a guarantee on durability!”
Certificates with the Certified Art Giclée™ quality mark and the GPE logo
The Certified Art Giclée™ is always accompanied by a certificate of authenticity carrying an embossment. This certificate of authenticity states all the important specifics of the edition. It shows a picture of the artwork, the name of the artist, the title, website, edition, number of EAs*, and the master printer. The certificates have a blind embossing with quality mark, numbering and signature of the artist and the master printer.
This certificate is also the guarantee on long durability. Certified Art Giclée fine art prints with certificates distinguish themselves from all other Giclée prints in the market in terms of quality. They also give consumers comfortable reassurance that they have purchased something valuable.
*EA stands for Épreuve d’Artiste: these are extra prints made by order of the artist. These prints (never more than 10% of the edition) form part of the edition and usually belong to the artist’s private collection. Artists often use the EAs as gifts to friends or on special occasions. When the numbered copies of an edition have been sold out, the Épreuves d’Artiste are often the only items which galleries can sell. EAs are frequently sold for higher amounts because they are the last remaining specimens. EAs are also signed as APs, which stands for ‘Artist Proof’.
Basic Giclée™
In addition to the high-quality Certified Art Giclée™, Re-Art also provides a Basic Giclée™. The Basic Giclée™ is an affordable alternative to the Certified Art Giclée™ and its durability is guaranteed for at least 30 years. The Basic Giclée is a fine alternative for beginning artists.
What benefits does a Re-Art giclée give artists?
Printing on Demand
The greatest advantage of the giclée technique is that you do not need to have a mass edition printed anymore. This means you do not need to make a big investment, which would be required for a silkscreen, etching or lithography edition. We use ‘printing on demand’. You can always order from us on a call-off basis, which allows you to start with one print and order extra copies when the first one has been sold. We guarantee that the last print is exactly identical to the first approved print. Even if repeat orders are months or years apart, we ensure a constant printing quality through color management. You run a low financial risk and have no storage problem, which you do have with the other printing techniques.
Guarantee of colourfastness and durability
We give a guarantee on the durability of the giclées manufactured by us. We issue an accompanying certificate which safeguards this guarantee. The Certified Art Giclées that we make, have a durability of at least one hundred years under normal light conditions and four hundred years when conserved under museum conditions.
Costs are soon recovered
The start-up costs are usually relatively low and in many cases a profit is made already on the sale of the first print. When an entire edition is sold, this may yield up to three times more than the original that was sold.
High uniqueness value thanks to certificate of authenticity
The by now internationally known Certified Art Giclée certificates give galleries and consumers a safe feeling, which speeds up the purchase.
High stability in production process
We only use top tier products and our inks, canvases and types of paper have been selected for their high-quality properties. Our archival pigment inks, materials, scanners and printers are the best of their kind. For this reason, too, we can guarantee a stable production process.
Choice of many materials
We offer you a wide choice of materials on both canvas and paper in order thus to preserve the character of your original as much as possible.
Perfect colour approximation and colour correction possibilities
Thanks to our lithographic background we have grown up with color, color and color. Like nobody else we succeed in getting the ultimate result from our software and equipment for the perfect print. We make our own ICC profiles and calibrate our equipment every week. If desired, we can adjust all the colors for you.
Environmentally friendly process
Our giclée inks are free from chemicals, water-borne, and have no harmful impact on the environment. Our types of canvas and paper are built up from natural raw materials, pH-neutral and free from chemical whiteners and gluing agents.
The properties of giclée prints
Life span
People easily claim that a print will last 70 to 100 years. In practice this is absolutely untrue. The durability of a giclée print depends on many factors. We can show you test results indicating that the prints do not lose color, but that the inks and the material are degraded or come loose through exposure to UV light.
Inks and OBA-free and acid-free materials are essential for the durability.
The inks, types of paper and canvas that we use have been subjected to extensive durability tests in one of the most prominent, reliable and fully independent ink–media research institutes in the world: the Wilhelm Imaging Research Institute* in Iowa in the United States. Moreover, we at Re-Art also conduct tests for lightfastness by means of the Blue Wool test, in which we expose materials to high levels of UV light. Thanks to our combination of the inks, fine art paper, types of canvas and the possible varnish or scratch-resistant UV Top coating we can make Certified Art Giclées which last between 70 to 400** years. We give a cast-iron guarantee for this!
* Testing conditions and results according to the Wilhelm Imaging Research Institute: 25 degrees Celsius, air humidity 60% and light of 450 lux, at an exposure of 12 hours per day. These conditions are comparable to illumination in galleries and museums, offices and living-rooms.
** Depending on material and exposure to UV. As a rule, fine art paper and 100% cotton canvases last longest. When we say between 50 and 300 years, 50 years in your house with lots of light and 300 years under museum conditions are guaranteed.
Giclée prints that are offered for 40 euros per square metre or less are not prints with a long life span. This type of print is often manufactured with a low resolution and printed on cheap materials that are not acid-free. Moreover, these materials contain chemicals such as OBAs (whiteners) and are not provided with a special coating. Re-Art only prints with extremely reliable high-pigmented waterproof archival inks. These inks still have the longest possible durability compared to all other inks and chemical processes.
The process
For the manufacturing of high-grade Certified Art Giclée fine art prints, a high-quality digital print is needed. A color conversion to the giclée printing inks takes place on the digital file and subsequently a proof is made. If necessary, several proofs can be made to the customer’s satisfaction.
After approval by the artist a digital master file is made which we store in our archive for possible repeat orders. From this master file the fine art print can be made. The giclées made on a per-print basis and are always of a screenless quality. A single print in its highest print resolution may take as long as 30 minutes, depending on the size. So it is not a mass-production process.
The manufacture of a Certified Art Giclée™ is a piece of craftsmanship and is generally carried out by a master printer. A big advantage of the giclée is that you can start with one copy and place repeat orders on a call-off basis, i.e. printing on demand. The start-up costs compared to other fine art printing processes are very favourable and you do not need to buy a mass edition at once. This means you can place repeat orders later, and we guarantee that there is no colour difference between the first and last prints, even if the interval is long. All the colour information is stored in the digital master.
Size
In principle the giclée prints at Re-Art are printed from a roll. The maximum size is thus determined by the maximum width of the roll that you choose. It differs per material. Most materials come on rolls that are at least 111 cm wide and some even measure up to 152 and 164 cm. The length of the rolls is 12 to 15 meters.
Start making high-quality giclées
Are you interested in making giclée prints from your masterpiece? Choose for Certified Art Giclée™! If desired, we can refine your giclée with gold leaf, torn edges, or other ornaments. Make an appointment to find out about all the possibilities. Are you also interested in our other services, such as providing your art with a Diasec frame? Contact our company in Almere, The Netherlands, by calling +31 (0)36 536 88 75 or by sending an email to info@re-art.com.
