The publication of the Grafik des Kapitalistischen Realismus (Graphic Art of Capitalist Realism) print portfolio by the René Block Gallery in 1968 marked a notable graphic debut of the Capitalist Realism art group in West Germany. Commissioned by Berlin dealer and curator René Block, six artists, then living in West Germany, and all contemporaries of one another, were each invited to contribute one screenprint each to the project. The work of Klaus Peter Brehmer, Karl Horst Hödicke, Konrad Lueg (Fischer), Sigmar Polke, Wolf Vostell and Gerhard Richter are featured in the portfolio, along with an offset lithograph, designed by Block himself, which serves as the frontispiece.

The primary concern of this thesis is both formal and critical. It is rooted in the understanding that Capitalist Realism is based upon a mosaic of influences and operated as a multi-dimensional artistic movement applying both inventive material modes of parody and appropriating key symbols of postwar West Germany and the promises of the Economic Miracle. Some specific considerations include the manner in which each artist manipulates the screenprint medium to connote parodies of mass-media imagery and modern life; an examination of the 1963 performance piece, "Living with Pop: A Demonstration for Capitalist Realism," organized by two of the portfolio’s contributors – Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg in Düsseldorf; and René Block’s 1971 publication of the catalogue raisonné Grafik des Kapitalistischen Realismus: Werkverzeichnisse bis 1971.

The thesis identified and explored the paradigm shift in the perception of Russian printmaking from a reproductive to an independent artistic medium.

This dissertation is the first to consider the innovative prints of the ninety-one women artists who worked at Atelier 17, the avant-garde printmaking workshop in New York between 1940 and 1955, alongside the emergence of the New York School. Situating the prints of a core group of eight artists—Louise Bourgeois, Minna Citron, Worden Day, Dorothy Dehner, Sue Fuller, Alice Trumbull Mason, Louise Nevelson, and Anne Ryan—within the context of midcentury gender norms, my dissertation discusses how women artists used groundbreaking techniques to achieve novel forms of abstraction. I argue that women printmakers stood at the center of artistic and societal debates about acceptable feminine roles and women in the workforce. These artists both followed and challenged notions of femininity through their material and physical experimentations with abstract printmaking.

Chapter One’s critical historiography of American women printmakers from 1800 through the 1930s illuminates why Atelier 17 was so significant to the development of women’s professional identities. By scrutinizing midcentury gender norms that prescribed acceptable spaces of work and types of feminine labor, Chapter Two uses signaling theory to explain how women artists relied on printmaking’s physicality to demonstrate their serious professional intentions. The rigorous process of carving plates and woodblocks, for example, simulated sculpting, spurring many women to enter this male-dominated field. Chapter Three examines the potential of gender and socio-cultural norms to affect the meanings of printmaking’s tools. Chapter Four considers the formal strategies that Atelier 17 artists employed to make their prints relevant to Abstract Expressionism. Although women artists could be leading practitioners of avant-garde printmaking, critics initially deemed their small prints unambitious and placed them on the periphery of Abstract Expressionism. Chapter Five examines the networks that women artists developed to promote their reputations as abstractionists and send prints widely to print annuals, group exhibitions and solo shows.

The dissertation’s case studies expand conceptions of Abstract Expressionism and identify isolated instances of women working towards gender equality before the Women’s Art Movement. The great creative strides women artists took while experimenting with avant-garde printmaking at Atelier 17 had lasting impacts on later generations of women artists.