Warsager was born 23 June 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. 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. His work was also included in the 1944
Dallas Museum of Art exhibition of the
National Serigraph Society. He died on 27 November 1974 at Slough, Berkshire, England, United Kingdom. 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. His drawing
The Law, which appeared in
New Masses in 1934, "exemplified the joining of antiracist and antifascist references to critique. . social failures." He illustrated the label of folk singer-songwriter
Earl Hawley Robinson’s 1940 recording
Earl Robinson: S
ongs for Americans, a 78 RPM 4-pocket album released in the U.S. 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. 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". 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. … 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 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".
Creative Printmakers Group 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"". 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”. and published a newsletter. 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". The Dallas Museum of Art held several exhibits of the work of the National serigraph Society members in 1944, 1947, and 1951
Service in U.S. Army Air Forces Silk Screen Unit 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. Warsager and fellow artists in the unit designed and created a mural in the map room of the Operations Building at Lowry Field, at the suggestion of Brig. Gen. Albert L. Sneed, to "make Lowry one of the most talked of stations among pilots on the Chicago to San Francisco airway." Anthony Velonis also served in this military Silk Screen Unit after Warsager requested that the Army Air Forces assign Velonis to the unit, based on Velonis' strong technical screen printing skills and expertise. Ceraglass evolved from their previous endeavor, Creative Printmakers Group, which they had started with several other artists. Along with the work of numerous artists, Creative Printmakers printed holiday cards for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A cosmetics manufacturer spotted Warsager’s and Velonis' work and then visited them at the studio they shared, where he inquired whether the silk-screen process with which they were expert could be used on glass to produce an attractive bottle for a men’s shaving lotion. He persuaded them to decorate cosmetic containers. Encouraged by the success of that side venture, Warsager and Velonis formed their own firm and later decorated containers for cosmetic manufacturers such as Elizabeth Arden, Dorothy Gray and Shulton. Velonis held patents on innovative processes involved in their manufacturing process; in addition to being an artist, Velonis was technically skilled and developed many of the paints and techniques used in their production processes. The
Museum of American Glass in West Virginia holds numerous glassware items in its collection that were designed and produced by Ceragraphic and Ceraglass. ==Gallery==