Circle Image No. 25

Louis Schanker

Louis Schanker, who had honed his printmaking skills working and teaching block printing in the FAP/WPA, began working on a series of relief images using circles in the late 1940s (Hayter illustrates an example in "About Prints", page 22). Here is an example of an later color woodcut by Schanker.

Bold, energetic strokes and color are hallmarks of Schanker's art, a style that took well to the relief print process. Hayter and Schanker taught together at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan after Stanley William Hayter's arrival in the States, and Hayter invited Schanker to teach the color woodcut medium at the Atelier in 1945.

Hayter urged the artists in his workshop Atelier 17 in New York to experiment with printmaking techniques, and many used unconventional means to create their images.