By Brett Lortie
Inkjet technology is little more than a decade old. That's nothing when you consider it was over 500 years ago when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Martin Schongauer, and Lucas van Leyden began printing engravings. Now artists are turning to the once-lowly inkjet for fine-art printmaking. It's called "giclée."
"Little squirt"
By many accounts, the use of inkjet printers to create fine art began in 1990, in Venice Beach, California, where musician Graham Nash began experimenting with methods of outputting his computer-enhanced black and white photographs.
After more than a year of research, Nash discovered the Iris 3047 graphics printer, but wasn't satisfied with the surface quality of standard Iris papers. So, he and partner R. Mac Holbert began modifying the printer and its software so they could print on a variety of quality papers. After much experimentation and some initial successes, they produced the first giclée, or "little squirt."
The term giclée is tossed around rather freely when it comes to digital fine art prints, which simply adds to your confusion when someone trying to sell you art by the next Picasso launches into art-speak. Originally, giclée applied to output on an Iris inkjet printer, specifically the Iris 3024, 3047, or the 3047G (renamed the Iris GPRINT in 1998). But today, depending on whom you talk to, giclée refers to digital fine art prints output on any high-quality inkjet, for instance, those done on an Epson 3000 or better.
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Information provided by: http://www.spanishprintmakers.com