The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00215

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20497

In this important book Christina Weyl takes us into the experimental New York print studio Atelier 17 and highlights the women whose work there advanced both modernism and feminism in the 1940s and 1950s. Weyl focuses on eight artists—Louise Bourgeois, Minna Citron, Worden Day, Dorothy Dehner, Sue Fuller, Alice Trumbull Mason, Louise Nevelson, and Anne Ryan—who bent the technical rules of printmaking and blazed new aesthetic terrain with their etchings, engravings, and woodcuts. She reveals how Atelier 17 operated as an uncommonly egalitarian laboratory for revolutionizing print technique, style, and scale. It facilitated women artists’ engagement with modernist styles, providing a forum for extraordinary achievements that shaped postwar sculpture, fiber art, neo-Dadaism, and the Pattern and Decoration movement. Atelier 17 fostered solidarity among women pursuing modernist forms of expression, providing inspiration for feminist collective action in the 1960s and 1970s. The Women of Atelier 17 also identifies for the first time nearly 100 women, many previously unknown, who worked at the studio, and provides incisive illustrated biographies of selected artists.

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Author

PublisherYale University Press

Print publication date June 2019 (in print)

Print ISBN 9780300238501

EISBN 9780300259278

Illustrations 139

Print Status in print

Publisher (in print)

WorldCat

Google Books

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List of illustrations

Moon Goddess
Moon Goddess I
Moon Goddess II
Moon Goddess
Moving-Static-Moving Figure
Black Majesty
Atelier 17 party at the home of Karl and Ilse Schrag, New York
Sonnenschein Umbrella Company
Bottles
New York Telephone and Telegraph
Embarkation
Coquillages
Untitled
Portraits
Untitled
Hope Springs Eternal/Bargain Basement
Painting #1
Mnemosyne
Atelier 17 (The advanced group works together)
Ruth Cyril at Atelier 17 on East Eighth Street
Ellen Abbey Countey, Enrique Zañartu, and Fred Becker working in Atelier 17's New School classroom
Interior of Atelier 17 at the New School
The Intaglio Printers
Edward Countey at Atelier 17
Atelier 17 (Examining the proof)
Érotique voilée
Obelisque
Jan Gelb printing
Charm cover
Atelier 17 (Frannie engraves a copper plate)
Royalty No. 2
The Magic Garden
Advertisement for Delta Brush Manufacturing Corporation
Enlargement of the Print of a Burin Line
The World of Amelia Shade
Worden Day in her studio in New Jersey
He Disappeared into Complete Silence (plate 6)
Installation view of Louise Bourgeois: Sculptures at Peridot Gallery, New York
My Life on the Farm
Copper plate for Ancestors
Ancestors
Untitled
Untitled
Abstraction
Combat
Improbable Hound
Way thru the Woods
Cock
Hen
Collage for Hen
Angels Wrestling
The Visitor
The Spiders
In the Meadow
Collage #27 (The Flower)
Number 319
Artist with Family
String Composition #63
The Sailor's Dream
Collage for Sailor's Dream
Anonymous Was a Woman IV
Majesty
Squid under Pier
Indicative Displacement
Meanderthal Roturns
Kinfolk from Chinquapin Hollow
The Burning Bush
Connoisseurs of Prints
Abstract Expression
Abstract Expression
Abstract Expression
Bird Machine
Arrival
Prêle
Slipstream
Labyrinth
Jungle Figures III
XXXIV
Lancelot and Guinevere
Tides of the City
Men Seldom Make Passes
Installation view of Worden Day's The Burning Bush (third from left of support beam) as seen in the Brooklyn Museum's exhibition of 14 Painter-Printmakers (1955–56)
Installation photograph of the opening night of the Brooklyn Museum's Tenth National Print Annual Exhibition
Prima Vera
Marginal Peripheries
Interference of Closed Forms
Anne Ryan's woodcuts in Milgrim's Department Store window
Fantasia
The Sorceress
Tears
Whatever
Flight to Tomorrow
The Wine Glass
Deep Sound
Hyaline Pavane
14 Painter-Printmakers party
Bertha Schaefer and Will Barnet (left) at the 14 Painter-Printmakers exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum
Burst of '29
9 Triangles
Ruth Leaf printmaking studio
Jan Gelb and Minna Citron in Provincetown, Massachusetts
Some Living American Women Artists
University of Iowa printmaking studios
Gathering at apartment of Dorothy Dehner (left), with Worden Day (center) and Lily Ente (right)
Sue Fuller
Scattered Journey
Moon Night
Angel of the Annunciation
City Counterpoint
Figures in a Garden
Playing with an Idea (with Stanley William Hayter)
Untitled
Trees
Venus
Abstraction
Tailspin
Composition 13
Gigantic Shell
Beachcombers
With Abandon
Bouquet
Untitled
Night Wind
Battle against Death
The Table–Study No. 5
Untitled
Heavy Bird
Untitled portrait
Plant
Untitled
Impossible from Maria
Turning Forms
Crystalline Head
Figure in Space
Ecstatic Dance
The Last Judgment
Luna Composition No. 3, City
On Such a Night
Wind, Bird, and Other Northern Fauna

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Contents

The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York

Contents

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20498

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Acknowledgments

The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York

Acknowledgments

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PublisherYale University Press

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Introduction: Rethinking Atelier 17

The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York

While in residence at Atelier 17, the avant-garde workshop located in New York from 1940 to 1955, Louise Nevelson (1899–1988) ruffled more than a few feathers with her unorthodox and expressive methods...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.1-23

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00215.001

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20500

Chapter subject tags:Women printmakersPrints--TechniqueHayter, Stanley William, 1901-1988Feminism and artAvant-garde (Aesthetics)--United States--History--20th century

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1. “The Cell of a Revolution”

The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York

In Sue Fuller’s prepared statement for the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center’s 1993 panel discussion about Atelier 17, she acknowledged the magnitude of Atelier 17 not only for her own personal development...

Author

Chapter subject tags:Women printmakersFederal Art ProjectHayter, Stanley William, 1901-1988New School for Social Research (New York, N.Y. : 1919-1997)Avant-garde (Aesthetics)--United States--History--20th century

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.25-55

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00215.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20501

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2. Inky Fingers: Digging into Printmaking

The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York

Doris Seidler (1912–2010), a British expatriate who joined Atelier 17 shortly after settling in the United States, described the workshop’s East Eighth Street location...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.57-89

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00215.003

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20502

Chapter subject tags:Women printmakersWomen--Education--United StatesPrints--TechniqueSex role--United States--History--20th centuryWomen sculptors

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3. Material Matters: The Gender of Technique

The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York

The occasion of Atelier 17’s reopening at the New School presented Stanley William Hayter with an opportune moment to broadcast the studio’s mission to an American audience unfamiliar with its history...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.91-135

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00215.004

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20503

Chapter subject tags:Women printmakersSex role--United States--History--20th centuryTextile fabrics in artPrints--TechniqueCollage

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4. The Epic Print

The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York

In the June 1949 issue of The Tiger’s Eye, a short-lived postwar “little magazine,” eleven artists offered their personal motivations for making prints and discussed the position of the graphic arts at midcentury...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.137-167

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00215.005

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20504

Chapter subject tags:Women printmakersPrints--TechniqueSex role--United States--History--20th centuryFemininity in art

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5. Circulating Modernist Prints

The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York

Between the fall of 1951 and spring of 1952, Alice Trumbull Mason independently coordinated a traveling show of abstract etchings she produced at Atelier 17 in the mid-1940s...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.169-195

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00215.006

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20505

Chapter subject tags:Women printmakersArt--MarketingWomen--Social networksPrints, American--ExhibitionsArt--Societies, etc

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Conclusion: The Legacy of Atelier 17

The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York

Atelier 17’s legacy is often measured by tracing Hayter’s influence through the dissemination of his pedagogy and its effects on artists and their practice of printmaking...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.197-211

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00215.007

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20506

Chapter subject tags:Women printmakersArtistic collaborationArt--Study and teachingFeminism and artWomen--Social networks

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Appendix A: Atelier 17’s Female Members, 1940–1955

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The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York

~Methodology: This list, totaling ninety-seven names, was compiled using a variety of sources. Primary among them was the appendix in Joann Moser’s 1977 exhibition catalogue about Atelier 17 that incorporated the names of fifty-one women artists.When she was...

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PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20507

Appendix B: Selected Artist Biographies

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The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York

Appendix B: Selected Artist Biographies

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PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20508

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List of Abbreviations

The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York

Abbreviations

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PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20509

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Illustration Credits

The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York

~The photographers and the sources of visual material other than the owners indicated in the captions are as follows. Every effort has been made to supply complete and correct credits; if there are errors or omissions, please contact Yale University Press so that corrections can be made in any subsequent edition.

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PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20510

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Index

The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York

Index

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20511