https://observer.com/2026/03/arts-interview-david-cleaton-roberts-prints-editions-collecting/
https://observer.com/2026/04/print-renaissance-editions-art-collectors-expert-advice/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=arts&utm_term=04/14/2026
The Politics of Print: What the Medium’s Last Renaissance Can Teach Us About Our Current Market
The growth in demand for prints has been a bright spot in a shaky global art market, but oversupply, inconsistent quality and rapid scaling could undermine the confidence and enthusiasm of the collectors who support it.
I was invited to speak in January at The Print Show & Symposium Singapore in conjunction with Singapore Art Week about the ongoing “print renaissance,” which has seen the market share of works on paper grow from 2 percent in 2024 to 12 percent in 2025, as reported in the UBS & Art Basel Art Market report. It’s been a bright spot in a shaky global art market. In my role as the executive director of the International Fine Prints & Drawings Association, I’m able to glean a lot from daily communication with galleries and publishers, and I know firsthand that healthy markets depend on restraint as much as promotion.
As the print world has worked to expand its audience, it’s been refreshing to see how a rising generation of collectors, particularly those engaged with contemporary art, do not prioritize their interest by medium. They follow artists, ideas and social relevance. The affordability and accessibility of prints open the door to the market, inspiring interest and a desire to connect with an artist rather than a calculated transaction or focus on financial appreciation. At the IFPDA Print Fair, we see patrons who are curious, values-driven and eager to support artists by acquiring works directly from the printmaking studios and primary-market galleries. They want that hands-on experience that the fair offers and cultivates.
Attendance at the IFPDA Print Fair has ballooned from 8,000 in 2018 to more than 21,000 in 2026. We have gone from a fair at which it was said you could roll a bowling ball down the aisle without hitting anyone, to a fair with lines all the way around a New York City block. This growth reflects more than increased foot traffic. It signals trust and a belief that prints provide meaningful access to artists’ ideas.
What I love about contemporary printmaking is that it transcends the frame and defies traditional expectations as an organic element in an artist’s practice—not a reproductive medium. Artists who love printmaking and printmakers themselves prize the spirit of collaboration, accessibility and community, and collectors can see and feel that. But if we agree we are indeed in a print renaissance, what does this mean for collectors? What are the current trends and developments reshaping the global art market, and how are they redrawing today’s cultural and commercial landscapes?
Digital platforms have played a pivotal role in expanding the print audience, increasing visibility and introducing audiences to artists who might never have had a voice in traditional channels. This expansion of access through innovation has brought a new, exciting energy to the field. At the same time, we need to be clear-eyed about what kind of innovation this is. Rather than artistic innovation, it is innovation in marketing, packaging, distribution and scale. Historically, artists approached printmaking as a laboratory. The central question was which technique, or combination of techniques, would best achieve their vision. Monoprint, chine collé, woodblock, woodcut, chiaroscuro woodcut, etching, sugarlift, aquatint, engraving, lithography—each carries its own aesthetic and conceptual stakes.
When the driving question becomes how can we make more of these quickly and inexpensively, usually using digital printing or giclée, scale replaces experimentation, and prints devolve into merchandise and products for mass distribution, diminishing their cultural and economic value. A benefit edition that reproduces a pre-existing painting via digital printing in a quantity approaching 2,000 is a poster, not a fine art print, no matter how great the artist or how philanthropic the intentions.
Oversupply, inconsistent quality and rapid scaling can all undermine confidence and erode long-term value. A hundred years ago, in the early 20th Century, the print market experienced a renaissance similar to what we are seeing today. Prints were promoted as democratic art objects, often sold through clubs, portfolios and sometimes speculative publishing ventures (not unlike some online marketing schemes that set prices based on the number of orders within a set period—time-bound print-on-demand). When demand evaporated after the 1929 stock market crash, inventories flooded the market at distressed prices, damaging confidence in prints as stores of value and reinforcing the perception that they were disposable.
It was not until the late 1950s and ’60s, with the rise of new galleries, the expansion of museums, the emergence of modern and contemporary print workshops and a renewed emphasis on editions as integral to artistic practice, that prints regained cultural and market legitimacy. The recovery was slow because it required education, institutional support and restraint, not just renewed spending power.
The future of prints lies in the hands of collectors who support careful stewardship, cultural institutions and platforms that are healthily expanding to broader audiences. The heart of printmaking is collaboration and community. Translating that into how we collect can build a shock-proof market that offers more than a brief moment of opportunity. Long live the print renaissance!
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