Atelier 17 alumni

K.R.H. Sonderborg (1923–2008) was a German painter, graphic artist, university professor, and from 1980 prorector of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart for several years.
He was born in Sønderborg/Als, Denmark. Starting in 1953, he became a member of the group Zen 49, and studied at the Atelier 17 in St. W. Hayter in Paris. In the years 1953-1965, he spent time working in London, New York City, Tokyo, Chicago, Osaka, Cornwall, Ascona, Rome and Paris.
In 1951, the artist Kurt Rudolf Hoffmann called himself K.R.H. Sonderborg, after the town he was born in. Sonderborg went to school in Hamburg and completed a merchant's apprenticeship in 1939. He became a private student of the painter Ewald Becker-Carus in Hamburg in 1946. From 1947 to 1949 he studied painting, graphic art, and textile design at the State Art School in Hamburg under Willem Grimm and Maria May. In 1953 he joined the artists group Zen 49. He went to Paris the same year where he received training in engraving from Stanley William Hayter in the Atelier 17. Paris is also the place where he first encountered Tachism. In the following years, the artist went on longer journeys and worked for some time in London, Cornwall, New York, Ascona, Rome, and Paris again. In New York K.R.H. Sonderborg came into contact with Action Painting.
His own style became abstract, painting in swift broad strokes, that reveal the painting process, with spontaneous color application. Black and white contrasts are an important feature, later he added colors such as cadmium red. K.R.H. Sonderborg took part in the 1958 Biennale in Venice. He was awarded the Prize for Graphic Art at the Biennale in Tokyo in 1960 and the Great International Prize for Drawing at the 1963 Biennale in São Paulo. The artist showed works at the Documenta in Kassel in both 1959 and 1964. From 1965 to 1990 he held a post as Professor for Painting at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart. In 1969/70 he was a guest lecturer at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, as well as at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1986. Along with artists such as Karl Otto Götz, and Bernhard Schulze, K.R.H. Sonderborg is one of the most important and most impressive representatives of German Informal Art.
K.R.H. Sonderborg died in Hamburg on 18 February 2008, aged 84.

Garo Zareh Antreasian (1922 – 2018) was an American printmaker and educator. He was one of the co-founders of the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, California.

Virginia A. Myers (8 May 1927 – 7 December 2015) was an American artist, professor, and inventor. She was born in Greencastle, Indiana, and grew up with her parents and younger sister mostly in Cleveland, Ohio, where her father taught at various colleges and schools.
She studied at George Washington University and the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., and received her B.A. in drawing and painting in 1949. Then, in 1951 she went on to earn an M.F.A. in Painting from The California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland. Myers completed post-graduate work at the University of Illinois (Urbana) and in 1955 came to the University of Iowa to study printmaking with Mauricio Lasansky. From 1961 to 1962, Myers studied in Paris at Atelier 17 with Stanley William Hayter under a Fulbright Scholarship.
To supplement her income while completing post-graduate work in Iowa, Myers learned how to gild picture frames with silver lead. This work inspired her to incorporate silver and gold leaf in her intaglio prints.In 1962 Myers became an instructor at the University of Iowa, where she taught printmaking classes in the School of Art and Art History - she was the only woman teaching studio courses at this time. Myers would go on to earn a faculty position at the University of Iowa. In 1985 Myers attended a seminar taught by Glenn. E Hutchinson (President of Universal Stamping and Embossing Company). From this seminar, Myers learned of foil stamping and began to more seriously pursue this aspect of her artistic practice.
Myers taught intaglio printmaking and foil imaging, made possible by her invention of the Iowa Foil Printer, which makes use of the commercial foil stamping process. After the invention of the press, she worked in conjunction with community members and students to improve and document the printmaking process of foil stamping using the Iowa Foil Press, and they collectively produced a book, Foil Imaging...A New Art Form, in 2001.
She presented in more than 100 one-person exhibitions in the United States and abroad, and participated in more than 150 juried exhibitions and traveling shows nationally and internationally. Her work is included in collections at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio; and the Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, among others.