Cinq Personnages

Stanley William Hayter created his multicolored print Cinq Personnages ("five figures") as a memorial to his son David, who died of tuberculosis while a teenager. Recalling a Pietà, the traditional image of Mary grieving over the dead Christ, this lyrical interpretation of grief suggests several figures gathered beside a fallen youth (at lower right), who lies with legs splayed beneath a contorted upside-down figure whose mouth is wide open in agony. To the left of center, a small ghostlike figure, outlined in relief, evokes the ascending spirit of the dead.

To better tap his unconscious feelings and impulses, Hayter started with a sketch made without deliberate intention, from which he proceeded to develop his print through five states. He carefully engraved the sweeping contours of his rounded organic forms in a series of delicate lines, on which he then superimposed a variety of textures and colors. Some dark tonal areas were texturally enhanced by impressing fragments of cloth gauze and crumpled paper into a soft ground coated onto the etching plate surface. Cinq Personnages represents a technical milestone for Hayter, the first large print successfully made from a single plate on which intaglio and silkscreen methods were combined, instead of using different plates for each color and each technique. By experimenting with different ink viscosities, the artist discovered that he could successfully print the thin, bright silkscreen colors beneath the heavier areas of black intaglio ink. As the inscription indicates, Hayter gave this color proof impression to Ezio Martinelli (1919–80), one of three artists who assisted him in printing the edition of fifty impressions.

Hayter executed this complicated print at Atelier 17, the New York successor to the important collaborative printmaking workshop he had established in 1927 in Paris but subsequently relocated at the outbreak of World War II. An avid engraver since the mid-1920s, Hayter made 452 prints in the course of his career. He began making color prints only after his arrival in America in 1940. Cinq Personnages demonstrates the expressive abstracting nature of his approach as well as his daring, unconventional methods, which influenced several American artists working in the mode known as abstract expressionism, a dominant movement in American painting in the first decades of the post-war period.

L'Amérique et les modernes, 1900–1950 (American Moderns, 1900–1950), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, July 25–October 31, 2000. [exh. cat.]

On Process: The American Print, Technique Examined, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, January 13–March 2, 2001.

Atelier 17: Modern Printmaking in the Americas (Atelier 17: Gravura moderna nas Américas, Museu De Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC-USP) and Terra Foundation for American Art (organizer). Venue: Museu De Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC-USP), March 23–June 2, 2019. [exh. cat.]

Moser, Joann. Atelier 17: A 50th Anniversary Retrospective Exhibition. (exh. cat., Elvehjem Art Center). Madison, Wisconsin: Elvehjem Art Center, University of Wisconsin, 1977. Ill. pp. 35–36; no. 53.

Hayter, Stanley William. New Ways of Gravure: Innovative Techniques of Printmaking Taken from the Studio of a Master Craftsman. Rev. Ed. New York: Watson-Guptill, 1981. Text pp. 132–35.

Watrous, James. American Printmaking: A Century of American Printmaking, 1880–1980. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984. Text pp. 152–53; fig. 3, p. 137 (color).

Black, Peter and Désirée Moorehead. The Prints of Stanley William Hayter: A Complete Catalogue. London, England: Phaidon, 1992. No. 168, pp. 168–69.

Acton, David. A Spectrum of Innovation: Color in American Printmaking, 1890–1960. (exh. cat., Worcester Art Museum). New York: W. W. Norton, 1990. No. 60, pp. 166–67.

Rossetti de Toledo, Carolina, Ana Gonçalves Magalhães, and Peter John Brownlee. Atelier 17 e a gravura moderna nas Americas / Atelier 17 and Modern Printmaking in the Americas. (exh. cat., Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo). São Paulo, Brazil: 2019. Text pp. 234–235; ill. p. 233 (color).