Surrealists in New York: Atelier 17 and the Birth of Abstract Expressionism

In this meticulous history, art critic Darwent (Josef Albers) surveys the shift from surrealism to abstract expressionism on both sides of the Atlantic, finding the fulcrum at Paris’s Atelier 17, a small print workshop established in 1927 and helmed by Stanley William Hayter. In Paris, the “unchallenged world capital of modern art,” Atelier 17 in the late 1920s and the 1930s was a laboratory where European artists including Paul Klee and Max Ernst and up-and-coming Americans such as Alexander Calder could experiment with the tools and techniques of printmaking—particularly the burin, a brawny tool ideal for surrealist methods of drawing. When the rumblings of WWII sent artists fleeing from Europe, Atelier 17’s New York outpost became an “arena for cultural exchange” where exiled European artists found freedom from the constraints of French surrealism, as well as inspiration in Indigenous art, while Americans embraced an “artisanal and muscular” style. By the war’s end, New York’s flourishing art scene had catapulted the American avant-garde to global renown—and Atelier 17 alums such as Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock had helped popularize groundbreaking abstract styles. Darwent shines a light on the workshop’s place in history, chronicling in lively prose a once-in-a-generation catalyst of artistic and intellectual ferment. Art lovers of all stripes will be fascinated. (May)