Runner
Stanley William Hayter (London 1901 - Paris 1988)
Category
Art / Prints
Date
1939 (signed and dated) - 1939
Materials
Etching on paper
Measurements
380 x 282 mm
Place of origin
Paris
Order this imageCollection
2 Willow Road, London
NT 112302
Summary
Copperplate engraving on paper, Runner by Stanley William Hayter (London 1901 - Paris 1988), 1939, signed and dated Hayter / 39 bottom left. A nude male figure rendered in a fragmented Cubist style running across a tiled floor; the spinal column, pelvis and musculature discernible, the hands clasped in fists; with abstract shapes, looping lines and cross hatching in the background. The impression is inscribed in pencil by the artist top left: For Ernö & Ursula - SWH / 29.2.40 (i.e. 29 February 1940); bottom right: SW Hayter 1939 [...] July; and bottom left: Σ 5/5. This is an artist's proof, i.e. an impression of the print's final state reserved for the artist. As a rule, Hayter created no more than five proofs and generally labelled them 'Essai' or 'Σ' (sigma) for short.
Full description
Runner was made during the Spanish Civil War (July 1936-April 1939) - a defining conflict that encapsulated the major political and moral tensions of the period. It had profound impact among artists and writers who made work in response to its atrocities. Surrealist involvement in the war was marked by strong anti-fascist sentiment and direct political engagement. Stanley William Hayter was one of several artists associated with British and French Surrealist groups who went to Spain to volunteer for the Republican cause. His political allies and artistic collaborators included the Catalan artist Joan Miró and André Masson, a major proponent of Surrealist automatism. Paintings and prints were made to raise funds and to amplify the emotional reach of the war in the public consciousness (see Robin Adèle Greeley, Surrealism and the Spanish Civil War, New Haven and London 2006). Hayter mounted an exhibition of paintings entitled 'Spain 1937' at the Mayor Gallery, Cork Street, London, in February 1938, and organised the publication of two collections of prints: Solidarity (1938) and Fraternity (1939), with contributions by Miró, Tanguy, Picasso, Kandinsky, Masson, and Hecht. Commissioned by the French contemporary art dealer Ambroise Vollard (1866–1939), Runner is one of a portfolio of prints produced to accompany Spanish and French texts of The Siege of Numantia (El cerco de Numancia) by Cervantes. The project was abandoned on Vollard’s death and the prints were sold individually. Hayter also contributed Paysage Anthropophage (1937, no. 196 in Black and Moorhead 1992); Defeat (1938, no. 110 in ibid); Viol (1938, no. 112 in ibid); and Douro (1938, no. 113 in ibid). There is a carved plaster print of Runner in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (acc.no. 1945.5.78). Stanley William Hayter (London 1901 – Paris 1988) was a British painter and printmaker known for founding Atelier 17, one of the most influential printmaking studios of the 20th century. Born in Hackney, he trained as a chemist before turning to art in the late 1920s. Hayter moved to Paris in 1926 after three years working as a chemist-geologist for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Abadan, Iran. In Paris he met the Polish engraver Joseph Hecht, a formative friend who introduced him to the engraver’s burin and helped him to acquire his first printing press. Hayter soon established a studio which, in 1933 became the internationally renowned Atelier 17. Thanks largely to Hayter’s generous and egalitarian spirit, the Atelier evolved into a space where painters, sculptors and printmakers worked side by side, collaboratively exploring and expanding the technical possibilities of printmaking. Artists affiliated with the studio ranged from established figures – Picasso, Joan Miró and Max Ernst – to younger, emerging names. Hayter deliberately fostered a non-hierarchical working environment, treating the studio as a kind of laboratory where artists of different skill levels and approaches could freely exchange ideas. As he put it, ‘The way we work, there is no sort of professor and student deal going on here [...] You have got to put yourself on the level of the last beginner [...] You must of course have no personal vanity’ (Hayter quoted in Farrell 2016). At the centre of the Parisian avant-garde, Hayter closely associated with surrealist artists and incorporated the surrealist strategy of ‘psychic automatism’ in his work – an uninhibited, involuntary form of mark-making derived from the subconscious. For Hayter, this meant trusting the spontaneous movements of the hand and working freely onto the canvas or copperplate without preliminary drawings. The Goldfingers are likely to have met Hayter (who became a close friend) in Paris, perhaps as early as the 1920s when Ernő Goldfinger was studying at the Beaux Arts. A catalogue for a 1939 Atelier 17 exhibition is held within the 2 Willow Archive ('VIIe [Septième] Exposition de Gravures et Platres Graves du Groupe de L'Atelier 17', Galerie de Beaune, Rue de Beaune, Paris). At the outbreak of the Second World War, Hayter moved briefly to London to develop camouflage techniques for the British army (he had done the same in Spain in 1937). In 1940 he opened Atelier 17 in New York City and ran it there for ten years, working in association with the New School for Social Research. There again, the Atelier provided a forum for contemporary American artists such as Robert Motherwell, Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning to exchange with European émigré artists (Miró, Salvador Dalí, Marc Chagall and Louise Bourgeois among them). A full list of artists connected to the studio both in Paris and New York can be found on the Atelier 17 Project (www.a17project.org).
Provenance
This print appears, from the dedication, to have been given to Ernö Goldfinger and Ursula Ruth Blackwell, also known as Mrs Ernö Goldfinger, in 1940, a few months after they moved into 2 Willow Road. Purchased by the National Trust in 1994.
Marks and inscriptions
Top left and bottom right.: For Ernö + Ursula - SWH/ 29.2.40 (written top left), Hayter 39 (etched bottom left of image), (sigma symbol) 5/5 (written bottom left), S W Hayter 1939 (signed bottom right)
Makers and roles
Stanley William Hayter (London 1901 - Paris 1988), printmaker
References
Black and Moorhead 1992: Peter Black and Désirée Moorhead, The Prints of Stanley William Hayter: A Complete Catalogue, London 1992, p. 143, no. 128. Farrell 2016: Jennifer Farrell, Expanding Possibilities: Stanley William Hayter and Atelier 17, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2016, https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/workshop-and-legacy-stanley-william-hayter