Michel Caza: A Life in Screen Printing

Graeme Richardson-Locke honours the co-founder of FESPA and details his -long career, technical innovations, artistic collaborations, and dedication to raising industry standards.

Few people can claim to have lived the history of screen printing as completely as Michel Caza. In his own biography, Michel describes more than six decades in the industry not simply as a career, but as a form of “monomania”. It is a revealing word. For him, screen printing was never just a print production method. It was an obsession, a language, a craft, a science, an art form and, above all, a way of life.

Michel’s story began in 1954 in Stockholm, where, at the age of nineteen, he found himself working in a basement workshop while studying sociology and journalism. There he encountered the practical world of screen printing: manual film cutting, early Svantesson machines (latterly SVECIA), nylon mesh and photo-stenciling, which at the time was still treated almost as a secret process. Even in this first job, his employers recognised his energy, precision, intelligence and natural ability. What began as work soon became a lifelong commitment.

Returning to France in 1957, Michel entered a period of intense learning. He worked with Castelli and met many of the people who would shape European screen printing, including Louis Dubuit, Jacques Mounier and others who were developing equipment, inks and methods. These were years of strenuous working conditions, rack drying, strong chemicals and manual processes. But they were also years of discovery. Michel learned by doing, by questioning and by testing. This became one of the defining features of his career: he was never satisfied with accepting the limits of the process as others described them.

By the early 1960s, Michel was already writing, teaching and helping to define screen printing as a serious graphic technique. In 1959 he became involved with the review Le Sérigraphe, later Décoration POP Sérigraphie. The same period saw the creation of the French Screen Printing Association and the first formal screen printing technology diploma in France. In 1961 FESPA was created, bringing together national screen printing associations across Europe. Michel was part of this formative world: a network of printers, suppliers, teachers and innovators who understood that the industry needed structure, knowledge-sharing and international co-operation.

What made Michel different was the way he combined practical skill with theory. He did not see screen printing as a crude method suited only to flat block colours. In 1961 he was already working with four-colour process and 133-line halftones. By 1963 he was exploring the theory of colour ‘superposition’ or overlaying colours to create a much wider range of colours and researching halftones without conventional dots, a precursor to stochastic screening. His message was clear: screen printing could be precise, subtle and technically advanced. It could produce tone, detail and richness. It could serve art, advertising and industry.

His first major book, Techniques of Screenprinting, appeared in 1963. This was more than a manual. It was part of a wider mission to turn practical experience into shared knowledge.

Michel understood that if screen printing was to mature, printers needed more than tricks and guarded workshop habits. They needed explanation, structure, repeatable methods and confidence.

The 1960s also placed Michel at the heart of artistic screen printing. He worked with artists and became connected to the energy of the period, including the visual culture around 1968. He taught at Hornsey College of Art in London and engaged with serigraphy, lithography and engraving. In 1969 he founded Sérigraphie Michel Caza in Franconville, beginning a new phase focused on fine art, point-of-purchase advertising and creative print. Over the following years he printed for an extraordinary range of artists, including figures such as Dalí, Chagall, Miró, Lichtenstein, Calder, Vasarely, Sonia Delaunay and many others. His 1973 book La Sérigraphie, dedicated to art screen printing, helped give the process what he called its “letters of nobility”.

Michel’s importance, however, does not rest only on art. He was also one of the great technical modernisers of screen printing. In the mid-1970s he became deeply involved in the development of UV screen printing technology, working closely with Jacques Mounier and Jean-Pierre Vives at the Dubuit company. Their aim was ambitious: to replace many solvent-based systems with one ink technology and reduce reliance on solvents. Michel saw the environmental, technical and production advantages long before UV became mainstream. He promoted the technology internationally, including in the United States and the UK, and published The Theory and Practice of UV Screenprinting in 1980. This work helped establish UV curing as a major step forward for the industry.

At the same time, Michel never lost contact with production reality. After closing one company in 1978, he quickly returned to the press when Israeli artist Dan Reisinger and editors Léo and Mauricio Deicas asked him to produce the Scrolls of Fire project: It is a monumental and famous masterpiece about the Jewish diaspora depicted in 53 original prints in editions of 250 of each. To complete the work within the demanding timescale he rented a temporary workshop specifically for it in Pontoise. This work really moved him, and it was a turning point for Caza. This was the moment when he decided to go back to fine art, advertising and industrial printing. Atelier d’Art Michel Caza then moved to nearby Cergy and started to improve what he called “the Cazaway process”. A new technology evolved and his explanation is important: “Research cannot not be separated from the daily reality of printing practice. The press is where problems appear, where ideas are tested and where future developments are born. It was at this point when he met Thérèse a key moment in their screen-printing story, from here they built Graficaza together.

The 1980s brought further innovation. Michel adopted high-tension screens after meeting Don Newman in Chicago (Newman roller frames) and made them part of daily practice from 1984. His workshops expanded, first at Cergy and then through Graficaza, where art, advertising and industrial work came together. He continued to push technical limits: fine- line halftones, stochastic screening, 300-line halftones and later stochastic work at 650 pixels per inch. He also continued research into UV inks for difficult materials, including polypropylene, polyester and aluminium.

Recognition followed. Michel became associated with the Academy of Screen Printing Technology and won more than 160 awards in fourteen years across art, textiles, publishing, POP, ceramics, posters, billboards, postcards, adhesives, wood and metal. He also won numerous FESPA awards, including a remarkable 22 awards at FESPA 1996. Yet these awards were not simply personal trophies. They demonstrated what screen printing could achieve when technical knowledge, disciplined production and creative ambition worked together.

Michel’s relationship with FESPA was central to his international contribution having co- founded the organization in 1962. He was a pioneer of the early European screen-printing network, later returned to the French association and rejoined FESPA’s board in 1989. In 1996 he became President of FESPA. By then, he had spent decades helping screen printers across the world through seminars, articles, books, demonstrations and personal mentoring. His influence extended from Europe to North America and Asia, from Denver to Singapore, Beijing, Stavanger, Birmingham, Chicago, Milan, Stockholm, Barcelona, Zurich, New Orleans, Montreal and Toronto.

For FESPA members today, the co-founder, Michel Caza’s contribution can be understood in three clear ways.

First, he helped transform screen printing from craft into industry. He respected the craft, but he wanted it to be systematic, measurable and capable of meeting modern production demands.

Second, he proved that screen printing could be both artistic and industrial. He moved easily between fine art prints, POP displays, stickers, museum reproductions, ceramic decals, membrane switches, car dials, conductive inks and textile applications.

Third, he shared knowledge generously. He trained, informed and inspired hundreds of printers. He wrote, taught, demonstrated and challenged others to raise their standards. Those who learned or interned with Michel and understood that the intense concentration to improve and push the process have benefitted immeasurably from his approach. I remember having Michel and Therese Caza coming to stay in Brighton and our discussions on the merits and challenges of 300 lpi screening in fine art screen printing and two days of examination of every element from screen tension, stencil thickness, ink rheology and colour order in CMYK production. Having started my own journey in screen printing in 1984 I thought I knew a thing or two but Michel reminded me of the importance of continued learning that opens new areas to explore and be curious about in the endeavor to reach our goals.

Michel once wrote that screen printers had become “manufacturers of images” while still remaining screen printers. That phrase captures his legacy. He saw the process not as a narrow technique, but as a flexible image-making technology with extraordinary range. His life reminds us that progress in print comes from curiosity, discipline, collaboration and the courage to question accepted limits.

For FESPA, Michel Caza is more than a former President. He is part of the federation’s living memory: a printer, writer, teacher, researcher and pioneer whose work helped shape modern screen printing and whose example still speaks clearly to every printer who wants to improve.

As a final thought, remarkable people like Michel have given their all to lay the groundwork for those of us who came later and we owe them a debt of honor for their leading innovation and professionalism. Screen printing is still a vibrant and remarkably creative process that whilst superseded in some markets by wide format inkjet can still offer that creative touch of fluorescence, metallic, scent, glitter, varnish or structure to elevate the normal into the extraordinary.

Michel Caza died on 23rd May 2026 at the age of 91 – We will miss him but we carry his spirit forward.