STANLEY WILLIAM HAYTER, 1952

Winged Figures (Personnages ailes), 1901-1988
Engraving, etching and scorper in colors, on wove paper, with full margins, I. 15 3/4 x 12 7/8 in. (40 x 32.7 cm); S. 23 3/4 x 19 3/4 in. (60.3 x 50.2 cm). signed, dated `52', titled and annotated `Essai de Couleurs' in pencil (a color trial proof, the edition was 90 and 15 artist's proofs), published by Kornfeld and Klipstein, Bern, a small pale moisture stain at the upper right image corner and surrounding margin, occasional pale staining, soiling and soft rubbing in the margins, two repaired tears at upper right, soiling on the reverse, otherwise in good condition, framed.

LITERATURE Peter Black and Désirée Moorhead 205

Stanley William Hayter was one of the 20th century's most influential printmakers.  At Atelier 17, the studio he set up in Paris in 1927, he helped Picasso, Giacometti, Miró and others to create prints with an emphasis on experimentation in intaglio printmaking.  From 1940-50 he lived in New York where he re-established his workshop and was part of the Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist movements.  Alexander Calder, Roberto Matta, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko and de kooning, among others came to work with him. ...Greens, blacks, oranges, pinks, violets and yellows created off-harmonies unusual in intaglio printing, or in any printing for that matter.  I can remember artists and critics in the late 1940s agreeing that Hayter was a wonderful engraver but that he had 'no colour sense'.  Then, almost 20 years later, Op Art appeared with its psychedelic colors, fluorescent accents swelling moiré patterns and all-over optical dazzle.  Hayter appeared as a precursor in the use of dissonant colors, though he had in mind psychological justness rather than mere ocular sensation.  (Jacob Kainen the Prints of Stanley William Hayter: A Complete Catalogue, Peter Black and Désirée Moorhead, Phaidon Press Limited, London, 1992, p. 16)