Atelier 17

Atelier 17 Atelier 17 was an influential printmaking workshop and collaborative art studio founded in Paris in 1927 that became a nexus for avant‑garde printmaking, experimental intaglio techniques, and transatlantic artistic exchange. Its activities connected a wide array of European and American artists, critics, curators, and collectors, fostering innovations that impacted modernism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and postwar graphic arts movements. The studio’s migrations and pedagogical role tied together networks around Paris, London, and New York, linking exhibitions, journals, museums, and academic institutions.

History

The studio originated in interwar Paris amid ferment involving Surrealism, Cubism, and the legacy of Fauvism; early Parisian participants engaged with salons, galleries, and publishers such as Galerie Paul Guillaume and Société des Artistes Indépendants. In the late 1930s geopolitical tensions including the Spanish Civil War and the approach of World War II prompted expatriation of artists and the eventual relocation to London in 1939 where the studio intersected with émigré networks around Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and institutions like the Courtauld Institute. With the outbreak of war and the fall of France, the founder emigrated to New York City where the studio became central to wartime and postwar exchanges among émigrés including refugees from Nazi Germany and the broader community around The Museum of Modern Art and Art Students League of New York. After 1950 the studio returned to Paris, reconnecting with galleries such as Galerie Maeght and museums like the Centre Pompidou and the Musée d'Orsay, while its alumni continued teaching at universities including Yale University, Columbia University, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Founding and Key Figures

Founded by the English printmaker Stanley William Hayter the studio attracted a diverse roster of artists: early collaborators included Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, André Masson, Max Ernst, and Paul Klee; later visitors and residents encompassed Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Henri Matisse, Yves Tanguy, Giorgio de Chirico, Alexander Calder, Lucian Freud, Robert Motherwell, César Domela, Kurt Schwitters, Jean Arp, Frida Kahlo, Dorothea Tanning, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo, Isamu Noguchi, Richard Pousette-Dart, Helen Frankenthaler, Roberto Matta, Eduardo Paolozzi, László Moholy-Nagy, Vasily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, Georges Braque, André Breton, Maurice Evans, Graham Sutherland, John Sloan, Philip Guston, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Eileen Gray, Maurice de Vlaminck, George Grosz, Marcel Duchamp, Hans Hartung, Jean Dubuffet, Arshile Gorky, David Hockney, Gustave Moreau, Edvard Munch, Camille Pissarro, Paul Klee, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Kokoschka—figures who circulated through the studio’s workshops, residencies, and print portfolios. Curators, printers, and publishers such as Ambroise Vollard, Pierre Matisse, Giorgio Upjohn and critics from The Burlington Magazine and Artforum further shaped the studio’s reputation.

Techniques and Innovations

The studio specialized in intaglio processes including etching, engraving, aquatint, and experimental relief methods adapted for monotype and viscosity printing, often developing multilayer techniques that allowed simultaneous inking of plates with different viscosities. Innovations included the refinement of viscosity printing that engaged pigments with differing oil consistencies, advanced use of soft ground for texture by artists like Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy, and hybrid approaches combining lithography influences from Alois Senefelder with traditional etching. Hayter’s technical collaborations with printmakers, conservators, and metallurgists linked to laboratories and workshops associated with institutions such as the British Museum and the National Gallery of Art, producing prints that integrated gestural painterly effects seen in works by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and textural experiments by Paul Klee and Lucian Freud.

Influence and Legacy

Atelier 17’s pedagogy and collaborative model influenced printmaking studios, university programs, and museum print rooms across Europe and North America, contributing to curricula at Royal College of Art, École des Beaux-Arts, Cooper Union, and Pratt Institute. Its alumni and visitors played central roles in movements such as Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Dada, and Concrete Art, and contributed to major exhibitions at Tate Modern, Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Art Institute of Chicago. The studio’s technical repertoire informed conservation practices at institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and fostered print publishing enterprises including Crown Point Press and ULAE. Scholarly discourse in journals from Apollo (magazine) to Art Bulletin traces Atelier 17’s impact on graphic experimentation, while retrospectives and catalogues raisonnés have been organized by curators from Tate Britain, Centre Pompidou, and The Phillips Collection.

Exhibitions and Publications

Portfolios and exhibitions associated with the studio were mounted in venues such as Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Galerie Bonaparte, The Museum of Modern Art, Tate Gallery, Kunsthalle Basel, MoMA PS1, and the National Gallery of Canada. Key catalogues, monographs, and exhibition catalogues have been produced by scholars and critics affiliated with Yale University Press, Thames & Hudson, Rizzoli, Skira, and university presses at Harvard University and Columbia University. Artist books, limited editions, and collaborative portfolios involved publishers and dealers including Pierre Matisse Gallery, Gaston Diehl, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, and collectors from institutions like the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Fondation Maeght, ensuring the studio’s prints entered major museum collections and private holdings worldwide.

Category:Printmaking studios