HAYTER AND STUDIO 17
The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, Vol. XII, No. 3, August 1944
James Johnson Sweeney, Stanley William Hayter
James Johnson Sweeney, Stanley William Hayter: HAYTER AND STUDIO 17. New York City: Museum of Modern Art, 1944. First edition [The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, Vol. XII, No. 3, August 1944]. Slim quarto. Photo illustrated stapled self wrappers. 16 pp. 10 black and white illustrations. Wrappers lightly worn. Faint dampstaining to lower edge of last couple of leaves. Interior unmarked and clean. A very good copy.
7.5 x 10 staple-bound booklet with 16 pages and 10 black and white illustrations. Articles titled “New Directions in Gravure” by James Johnson Sweeney and “Techniques of Gravure” by Stanley William Hayter. Includes artwork by Abraham Rattner, Joan Miro, Stanley William Hayter, Ian Hugo, André Masson, Mauricio Lasanky, Marc Chagall and Jacques Lipchitz.
Important early document on Stanley William Hayter, CBE (1901 – 1988) the English painter and printmaker associated in the 1930s with Surrealism and from 1940 onward with Abstract Expressionism. Regarded as one of the most significant printmakers of the 20th century, in 1927 Hayter founded the legendary Atelier 17 studio in Paris. Since his death in 1988, it has been known as Atelier Contrepoint. Among the artists Hayter was credited with influencing were Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Mauricio Lasansky, James F. Walker, K.R.H. Sonderborg, K.P. Brehmer and Tinca Stegovec.
He is noted for his innovative work in the development of viscosity printing (a process that exploits varying viscosities of oil-based inks to lay three or more colours on a single intaglio plate).
In 1926, Hayter went to Paris, where he studied briefly at the Académie Julian. That same year, he met Polish printmaker Józef Hecht, who introduced Hayter to copper engraving using the traditional burin technique. Hecht helped Hayter acquire a press for starting a printmaking studio for artists young and old, experienced and inexperienced, to work together in exploring the engraving medium.[4] In 1927, Hayter opened the studio, and in 1933 he moved it to No. 17, Rue Campagne-Première, where it became internationally known as Atelier 17.
Hayter worked with many contemporary artists to encourage their exploration of printmaking as a medium. Artists such as Miró, Picasso and Kandinsky collaborated on creating print editions (Fraternité and Solidarité) to raise funds for the support of the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil war and the Communist Cause.
At the outbreak of World War II, Hayter moved Atelier 17 to New York City and taught printmaking at the New School. Artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko made prints at the New York Atelier 17. During the war, Hayter collaborated with British artist, historian and poet Roland Penrose and others in setting up a camouflage training unit. He also first produced finished prints with the method he called “simultaneous color printing,” where color was added to inked intaglio plates by means such as color-ink-soaked rags, stencils, or rolling a thicker, more viscous ink over a thinner ink, where the thicker ink is rejected and adheres only to the surface surrounding the first ink.
Hayter acted as advisor to the Museum of Modern Art for the show Britain at War. In connection with the exhibition, he devised an analog computer to duplicate the angle of the sun and shadow lengths for any time, day and latitude. [Wikipedia]