What printmaking technique did Andy Warhol use to mass-produce images like Marilyn Monroe?

The printmaking technique Andy Warhol used to mass-produce images like Marilyn Monroe was silkscreen printing.

Also called screen printing or serigraphy, the process pushes ink through a fine mesh screen onto a surface. Areas blocked by an emulsion or stencil remain unprinted, allowing separate screens to apply different colors. Warhol often combined photographic source material with bold color fields and repeated impressions.

His Marilyn images began with a publicity photograph from the 1953 film Niagara. Warhol used the image in works such as Gold Marilyn Monroe and Marilyn Diptych, both made in 1962, shortly after Monroe’s death. In Marilyn Diptych, the same face appears 50 times, with bright color on one side and fading black-and-white impressions on the other.

A common mix-up is calling these works simply “prints.” Many are screenprint paintings on canvas, combining printed ink with hand-painted passages. Warhol’s attraction to the technique lay partly in its assembly-line potential: repetition made a single celebrity image resemble a mass-media product while small imperfections kept each impression distinct.