Online publication (June 2019)
Supplement to The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York

Published with Quire from Getty Publications
Supported through a publication grant from the Society for the Preservation of American Modernists

Nearly one hundred women artists became affiliated with Atelier 17, the avant-garde printmaking studio located in New York City between 1940 and 1955. Atelier 17 facilitated women’s exposure to and eventual practice of modernist styles, including abstraction, surrealism, and expressionism. Making prints at Atelier 17 served as a conduit through which these female artists realized extraordinary professional achievements and built momentum that, in some instances, spurred major developments in postwar sculpture, fiber art, Pattern and Decoration, and the neo-dada movement. More significantly, the experience of working at Atelier 17 also catalyzed a range of proto-feminist strategies and activity in the decades before women’s art movement of the 1970s.

Yet these workshop members have been consistently marginalized in published accounts of Atelier 17. For the first time, The Women of Atelier 17: The Biographical Supplement reconstructs each woman’s involvement with Atelier 17. To the extent possible given available primary documents and secondary literature, each biographical entry describes the artists’ background, education, and artistic training, as well as the method by which they learned about Atelier 17 and how the experience of working there affected the course of their lives, both personally and professionally. Most entries also feature a photograph of the artist and an image of her work—hopefully a print made at Atelier 17, and if not, a representative work made at roughly the same moment.

This online project complements The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York published by Yale University Press.