[2][3] His work was included in the 1940 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art entitled American Color Prints Under $10,[4] which was aimed at bringing public attention to these “inexpensive but dynamic artworks”; the effort was reportedly successful.
[7] Warsager was among the ‘radical illustrators’[8] 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.
), 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.
[12] 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".
[15] 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.
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".
[23] Warsager, Velonis, Joseph LeBoit, Max Arthur Cohn and several other artists founded the National Serigraph Society in 1940,[20] which held exhibits, operated a gallery,[24] and published a newsletter.
(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) [25] by Mathilda V. and James A. Schwalbach.
The organization was described as "a source of inspiration, a clearing house, and temple of artist and print makers everywhere" in Silk Screen Techniques[26] 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".
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.
[20][21] The commanding general of the AAFWTTC, Major General John F. Curry, wrote in a November 1943 commendation: “I wish to commend the Silk Screen Unit of the Reproduction Division at Lowry Field for the intelligence, imagination and originality displayed in designing and executing the posters requested by this headquarters for distribution to the various stations of this command.
[32] 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.
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.
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.
By 1965 Ceraglass and its affiliated company Ceragraphic occupied 56,000 square feet of factory and design space in Hackensack, NJ.
The Museum of American Glass in West Virginia holds numerous glassware items in its collection that were designed and produced by Ceragraphic and Ceraglass.