Stanley Hayter

Hayter was born in Hackney, England to a family of artists. Though always interested in art, he began his adult life as a chemist and scientist. He went to Paris in 1926 to study at the Acadamie Julian. where he met the engraver Jospeh Hecht and began to merge his early training in chemistry with a new found interest in printmaking. Hayter would spend most of his life in Paris where, in 1927, he founded an experimental workshop for the graphic arts, Atelier 17, that played a central role in the 20th century revival of the print as an independent art form. Through the late 1920s and into the 1930s he began a series of experiments using engraving, soft-ground etching, gaffrauge, open-bite, scorper and other innovative, textural techniques, all loosely based on the Surrealist/Jungian concepts of subconscious image and automatic line. In 1940 Hayter moved to New York and re-founded Atelier 17 at the New School, moving to a studio on East 8 Street in 1945. The studio again became a melting pot for the artists who had come over from Europe, American artists and some young rebels. In New York the emphasis was on experimental color printing. As in Paris, the salability of the image was near the bottom of the list of expectations. Hayter returned to Paris in 1950 and re-established Atelier 17, attracting more international artists, many now coming from Asia. He continued to experiment with color printing, including the use of Flowmaster pens, incongruous and fluorescent colors and flowing, interwoven patterns.

Art Institute of Chicago Dallas Museum of Art, Texas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Boston Museum of Modern Art, New York City
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British
Columbia Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Ball State Museum of Art, Indiana
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay, Oregon
Harvard University Art Museums, Massachusetts
Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Scotland
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh
Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.
Tate Gallery, London, UK
Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago
Walker Art Center, Minnesota