Canvas Art Prints

Why canvas prints look different from art prints on paper

Canvas changes how a motif reads on the wall. The cotton weave has a texture you can feel, so a canvas print looks more like a painted picture. That is why canvas often suits impressionist paintings by Monet or Van Gogh better than paper, and the same goes for abstract work and landscapes where brushstrokes and colour gradients carry the image. The weave also catches the light differently from each angle.

Here you'll find canvas versions from across the Kuriosis catalogue: from Japanese canvas prints and nature motifs to modern canvas prints by contemporary artists and works by old masters. If you already have something in mind, the filter narrows it down by style, subject or size.

Framed canvas prints or unframed on a stretcher frame

Every canvas print comes in two versions. Both arrive ready to hang.

The simpler version is the plain stretcher frame: we stretch the 400 g cotton canvas around an FSC-certified wooden frame roughly 2 cm deep. The motif continues around the edges, and the picture hangs on the wall without any further frame.

The second version is the floating frame canvas: the stretched canvas sits inside a solid wood frame, leaving a gap of 5 to 9 mm all round. The width varies with the size of the picture, so the gap stays in proportion. The frame comes in oak, black or brown. The gap makes the canvas seem to float, and of the two versions this one comes closest to a framed painting. As a rule of thumb, we pick black for strong, modern motifs and oak for warm tones; brown sits in between. This frame is only made for canvas prints. For a fine art print on paper you'd choose a classic frame, again in oak, black or brown.

Canvas prints come in 30 × 40 cm, 50 × 70 cm and 70 × 100 cm. The texture shows more on the larger sizes: 30 × 40 cm suits a row of several pictures, while at 70 × 100 cm a single canvas print is enough for the wall above the sofa. We make every canvas print in our Berlin studio, with pigment inks rated for more than 100 years.

Which motifs work best as canvas wall art

Canvas suits works that began as paintings: the cotton surface recalls a painter's canvas and brings reproductions of oil and acrylic pictures closer to the original. The weave, on the other hand, softens fine lines. Illustration, typography and photography usually look sharper as a fine art print on paper.

Impressionist landscapes work especially well, as do abstract compositions, Japanese shin-hanga woodblock prints with soft colour gradients, and contemporary art with bold blocks of colour. Most motifs come as a fine art print on paper and as a canvas print, each with its own product page. For the full comparison, read our guide canvas print or art print.