Knowledge in Practice: Stanley William Hayter and Atelier 17
Atelier 17 would become one of the most influential printmaking workshops of the twentieth century, helping shape generations of artists while changing how many thought about the medium itself.
To understand why, it helps to remember how powerful access to information really is.
As you’re reading this, you have access to more information and imagery at your fingertips than most people throughout history could imagine. This concept would be truly alien to anyone who died before the inception of the internet, let alone the printing press—which allowed “lower” classes of people to get information they otherwise would have scarce access to. Once they learned to read, of course.
Similarly, the myriad techniques that fall under the printmaking umbrella are credited and generally most valued for their ability to reproduce and circulate original imagery to the masses.
Despite well-known artists like Rembrandt and Goya harnessing the medium in their work, printmaking was still largely understood by the early 20th century as a vehicle for experimentation—an assumption that would be challenged directly by Stanley William Hayter.
Originally a chemist, Hayter moved to Paris in his mid-twenties. Studying under Józef Hecht, he developed an intense taste for intaglio techniques: using a steel burin (cutting tool) to engrave a metal plate, applying and wiping away ink so it only remains in the original marks, and pressed into paper.
As opposed to earlier masters obsessed with clarity and control—Hayter approached the process with Surrealist influence and fascination with the unconscious—etching shapes before he had an idea, letting the figures and relationships between them inform the composition and meaning.
Stanley William Hayter 1951 Signed “Trois Personnages” Limited Edition Etching
But Hayter also believed that the material chosen for a piece is directly tied to its meaning. This may seem contradictory to his free-association approach, yet for Hayter, "choosing material" and "forming meaning" were never separate acts—they happened simultaneously through the act of working the plate.
“What is the enjoyment of this art? The source of the joy of working in this field may be the participation in a process leading to the unknown, the opening of the mind, the surprise of discovery and the breakthrough of revelations.”
This free-flowing exchange of meaning and material mirrors the dynamic of Atelier 17, where Hayter helped thousands of artists and craftspeople learn the printmaking practice.
Joan Miró, Max Ernst, André Masson, Yves Tanguy, Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning all spent time contributing to the cooperative. What united such a diverse group of influential artists was exposure to Hayter's belief that technical process could be a source of discovery rather than simply a means of executing a predetermined idea.
Rather than providing its students fixed instruction, Atelier 17 allowed anyone to come in and learn by doing. Through this practice, printmaking began to operate within its rightful spot as an experimental medium and a productive access point for information exchange. The best of both worlds.
Its energy of Atelier 17 was and is defined by playfulness and informality, where technical experimentation was pursued seriously but without pretension. Its influence on Abstract Expressionism and many of the movements that followed is significant—and makes Hayter’s own work all the more interesting—central to the development of the movement, yet less widely recognized than the artists and ideas he helped shape.
In that sense, Atelier 17 remains something of an insider history for artists, collectors, and those interested in how images are actually made.
We invite you to explore works by Hayter and his Atelier 17 contemporaries available online and in the gallery. Featured below: Martin Barooshian, Walter Sorge, Daniel Platt, Kazuhisa Honda.
