Cruelty of Insects

1942

Cruelty of Insects, 1942. Stanley William Hayter (British, 1901–1988). Cranach wove paper; image: 20.1 x 24.9 cm (7 15/16 x 9 13/16 in.); sheet: 30.5 x 41.2 cm (12 x 16 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Peter N. Leicht and Derrick B. Strobl in honor of their parents Peter Leicht, Mary E. Leicht and Carole L. Strobl 2020.411 Stanley William Hayter is recognized within the history of printmaking as among the most innovative and experimental practitioners of intaglio techniques. After moving to New York from Paris in 1939, he developed a style influenced by Surrealism which proliferated at the time among New York School painters. This print features invented biomorphic forms inspired by the movement and uses overlapping and intertwining lines to draw the viewer into invented space. At the time when Stanley William Hayter made this print, relatively few artists worked in engraving, finding the technique too laborious.