Where does the word giclée come from?
Giclée is a French word that means to squirt, and is pronounced ‘ghee-clay’. The reason it is call giclée is because the printers digitally dispenses tiny squirts of ink onto canvas or paper in a million droplets per second. This produces a print with a resolution higher than the traditional lithograph and with a wider color gamut than serigraphy. None-the-less, the word was in fact coined by marketers who feared the art world wouldn’t accept this new medium as being valid. These days, however, much of the limited edition art you see in galleries is produced using giclée, and many of the top name artists use this method of printing.
