Hyman Joseph Warsager Biography

Hyman Joseph Warsager

American

1909-1974

Biography

Hyman Joseph Warsager was born in New York City on June 23, 1909. He studied at the Hartford Art School, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pratt Institute of Art, the Grand Central School and the American Artists School.

Warsager joined the graphic division of the WPA/FAP in 1935, during the Depression, working in the new medium of “serigraphy” as well as etching and lithography. In his 1936 essay "Graphic Techniques in Progress" Warsager described silk screen as "'the most startling contribution to color prints' because of the economy, ease and diverse possibilities of the process." He also worked as an illustrator, contributing a number of images to “The New Masses”. He was politically active, speaking out about social injustice, poverty and racism.

Warsager was a member of the John Reed Club.  The club was named after the journalist who founded the American Communist Party in 1929.  The club had 30 branches in major cities across the country, and sponsored art exhibitions, art classes, and political discussions. He was also one of the 45 artists whose work was included in an exhibition at the ACA Gallery in Greenwich Village in 1935 titled, The Struggle for Negro Rights.

Despite his leftist stances Warsager, who was Jewish, served in the US Military during WWII between July of 1942 through July of 1945. His work is included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the San Francisco Art Academy, and Wesleyan University.

In his later years he experimented with abstract printmaking, even using a method of printing on a plaster matrix, a technique that had been used at Atelier 17 in both Paris and New York

Hyman J. Warsager died in the Bronx, New York on November 27, 1974.