Walter Battiss was the first to pioneer screen printmaking as a medium in its own right in South Africa. He was also the first South African artist to make an artist's book entirely of screen prints (Nesos, 1968). The 1970s saw Battiss mount the first art exhibition in South Africa consisting solely of screen prints at UNISA.

Battiss first explored printmaking when he exhibited some of his oil paintings in Maputo (the then Lourenco Marques), Mozambique where fellow artist, Fernando Fernandes introduced him to the screen print technique. In 1954, he printed his first serigraph and held an exhibition of 'auto-serigraphs' at Galerie Nicol in Pretoria.