Hyman J. Warsager

Hyman J. Warsager (1909–1974) was an American artist known for his printmaking.

Warsager was born in 1909 in New York City.

He attended the Pratt Institute, the Grand Central School of Art, and the American Artists School.

He worked for the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) creating prints.

Warsager was among the ‘radical illustrators’ who contributed anti-lynching and antifascism images to leftist political magazines in the 1930s with the aim of increasing awareness of racial terrorism being committed across the country as well as the rise of fascism in Europe.

In the late 1930's Warsager was a member of the WPA team in New York City that experimented with silkscreen techniques.

The team was led and inspired by Anthony Velonis.

Art historian Helen Manga wrote in Radical Art: Printmaking and the Left in 1930's New York: “The credibility that printmaking gained through the establishment of the Federal Art Projects’s Graphic Arts Division.

. . increased interest in viewing and collecting modern fine art prints in the second half of the decade (1930’s).

The Graphic Arts Division was part of the Federal Art Project.

Robinson was one of the "new folk" artists of the Public Works Administration (P.W.A.), a New Deal government agency (1933–39), and he wrote the songs Joe Hill, Black and White, and the cantata Ballad for Americans.

His various songs were recorded by Paul Robeson, Lead Belly, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Odetta, Burl Ives, Three Dog Night, Sammy Davis Jr., Pete Seeger, and Joan Baez.

His drawing The Law, which appeared in New Masses in 1934, "exemplified the joining of antiracist and antifascist references to critique. . social failures."

Warsager later recalled that "the establishment of the Graphic division of the WPA/FAP in that memorable fall of 1935 injected new hope in the artists and a new life into the print".

. .initiated in 1935 to promoted work relief for visual artists.

. .  enabling them to maintain and improve their professional skills.

. . .It represented a visionary attempt to combine economic relief for creative artists with the cultural enrichment of the nation”.

About the original Federal Art Project team focused on silk screen printing, Manga wrote: "The team of six artists at the Graphic Arts Division who pioneered new screen-print technologies included Harry Gottlieb, Louis Lozowick, Eugene Morley, Elizabeth Olds, and Hyman Warsager. Harry Sternberg was also working independently on silkscreen printing with help from several other artists", including Ruth Chaney.

The early experimentation by Velonis in combination with the instructional booklet he wrote for the WPA and the WPA Federal Art Project team's collective efforts "would ultimately transform silkscreen printing from a commercial process to a fine-art medium".

Warsager and Velonis were longtime friends, collaborators, and later business partners.

In 1939, Velonis, Warsager and other artists co-founded the Creative Printmakers Group in New York City.

About this group, Sylvie Covey wrote in Modern Printmaking: A Guide to Traditional and Digital Techniques: "The group's shared screen-printing studio introduced the silkscreen process to many serious artists who went there to have editions printed. Vincent Longo worked as a colorist at Creative Printmakers Group, as did Jackson Pollock, and the print shop eventually became the most important silkscreen shop of the era. It was at about this time that the word serigraphy, which combines the Latin word seri ("silk") and the Greek word grapho ("to write"), first appeared. It was coined by Carl Zigrosser . . . . to distinguish fine-art from commercial silkscreen"".

Warsager was acquainted with the French-American artist Louise Bourgeois when they were both in their late twenties in New York City.

In June of 1939, Bourgeois visited him at the studio of Creative Printmakers Group in Manhattan.

Later that summer, during her trip to Paris, Bourgeois sent him a hand-written letter about organizing an exhibition with André Lurçat, the French architect, urban planner and painter, at Maison de la Culture in Paris, where Lurçat was also the manager.

She wrote: “I have shown him [Lurçat] your three prints and some work by Ruth Chaney and some by Will Barnet.

He likes them very much”.

His work was included in the 1940 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art entitled American Color Prints Under $10, which was aimed at bringing public attention to these “inexpensive but dynamic artworks”; the effort was reportedly successful.

He illustrated the label of folk singer-songwriter Earl Hawley Robinson’s 1940 recording Earl Robinson: Songs for Americans, a 78 RPM 4-pocket album released in the U.S.

Warsager, Velonis, Joseph Leboit, Max Arthur Cohn and several other artists founded the National Serigraph Society in 1940, which held exhibits, operated a gallery, and published a newsletter.

In an essay written in 1941, Carl Zigrosser, then curator of prints, drawings, and rare books at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, wrote: "Warsager has long been associated with Velonis; indeed he has shared a studio with him for the last few years and has also engaged in business with him under the name of Creative Printmakers Group".

Warsager served in the U.S. Army Air Forces' Western Technical Training Command (AAFWTTC) in Denver, CO from 1942 to 1945, where he taught aerial photography in the U.S. Army Air Forces School.

Based on his art training and experience, Warsager was assigned to head a new Silk Screen Unit for the design and production of color posters on various subjects that the Command wished to publicize.

His work was also included in the 1944 Dallas Museum of Art exhibition of the National Serigraph Society.

The Dallas Museum of Art held several exhibits of the work of the National serigraph Society members in 1944, 1947, and 1951

The Society was called a "major force in the development of serigraphy as a fine art. . .(that) set standards of excellence and has sent hundreds of exhibitions of its members' work to countries all over the world" in Silk-Screen Printing for Artists & Craftsmen (1970) by Mathilda V. and James A. Schwalbach.

The authors added that the exhibitions were responsible for a good deal of museum interest in the purchase of original prints as part of museum collections.

The organization was described as "a source of inspiration, a clearing house, and temple of artist and print makers everywhere" in Silk Screen Techniques by J.I. Biegeleisen and Max Arthur Cohn, who noted that it was largely responsible for the effective promotion of serigraphy, raising it to the level of a museum art form.

The Society's "active program of traveling exhibits, lectures, and portfolios of prints helped to sustain and broaden interest in the serigraph".

He died in 1974 in Buckinghamshire, England, United Kingdom.