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Fred Becker'Public Building' — American Modernism, WPAc. 1937
c. 1937
About the Item
Fred Becker, 'Public Building', wood engraving, c. 1937, edition c. 25. Signed and titled in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, on cream wove Japan paper; the full sheet with margins (1 3/8 to 2 1/8 inches), in excellent condition.
Created for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Federal Art Project, New York. Matted to museum standards, unframed.
Image size 6 1/16 x 8 1/16 inches (154 x 206 mm); sheet size 9 3/16 x 12 3/8 inches (233 x 314 mm).
Collections: The British Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York Public Library, University of Massachusetts Library.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Artist, printmaker, and professor Frederick Becker (1913-2004) was born in Oakland, California, and was raised in Hollywood, where his father was a silent film actor. He studied at the Otis Art Institute and, in 1933, moved to New York to study architecture at New York University, finding his calling in the fine arts. In 1934, he studied with Eugene Steinhof at the Beaux-Art Institute of Design in New York, and the following year, Becker was accepted into the New York Graphic Arts Division of the Works Progress Administration, where he received early recognition for his distinctive work as a printmaker of wood engravings and linocuts.
Influenced by the social and political climate of the great depression, he explored themes of human struggle, urban life, and the impact of industrialization on society. Becker’s experiences moonlighting as a caricaturist in New York’s nightclubs informed his dynamic and often surreal compositions with his personal blend of irony and humanism.
in 1940, he enrolled in the inaugural class of Atelier 17, the innovative New York graphics workshop established by British artist Stanley William Hayter. By the middle of the decade, Becker had become one of the most versatile technicians in the workshop, and he was among the artists who assisted Hayter with printing his own works. During this period, Becker turned to abstraction, employing color print techniques developed at Atelier 17. By the mid-1950s, his style had evolved from Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism.
Following his service in World War II, Becker accepted a teaching position at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia in 1946. Two years later, he went to Washington University in St. Louis, where he created the printmaking department and taught for twenty years. He went on to teach at the Fine Arts Department of the University of Massachusetts from 1968 to 1986.
Becker received a Tiffany Fellowship in 1948, a Yaddo stay in 1954, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Award in 1957. With the Guggenheim Fellowship, Becker traveled to Paris to work at Hayter’s original Atelier 17.
Becker has had numerous exhibitions, including retrospectives at the Herter Gallery; the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Molloy College, Rockville Center, NY, 1999; and an Exhibition of Prints, Union College, and Schenectady, NY, January/February 2002. His work is included in Breaking Ground: Printmaking in the US, 1940-1960 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2016); and in exhibitions celebrating the impact of Atelier 17 on 20th Century American Art at the Museum of Modern Art (1944), Syracuse University Galleries (2016), Baltimore Museum of Art (2017), and the Cleveland Museum of Art (2017). Becker’s graphic work has been included in six exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art from 1936 to 1995 and in three exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1938 to 2013
Over the course of his prolific career, Becker left a lasting mark on the American art scene, earning recognition for his technical virtuosity and his commitment to innovative artistic expression. Becker's graphic works are represented in the collections of the Library of Congress, Art Institute of Chicago, Baltimore Museum of Art, Davis Museum and Cultural Center, The British Museum, Kemper Art Museum, New York Public Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYPL, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York Public Library, Philadelphia Museum of Art, University of Massachusetts Library, University of Michigan Library, Wellesley College, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
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Image size 11 x 8 1/8 inches; sheet size 16 x 11 3/8 inches.
Created during the Great Depression for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Federal Art Project, New York City.
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