Stanley William Hayter CBE (27 December 1901 – 4 May 1988) was an English painter and master printmaker associated in the 1930s with surrealism and from 1940 onward with abstract expressionism.

[2] Among the artists who frequented the atelier were Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Nemesio Antúnez,[3] Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Wassily Kandinsky, Mauricio Lasansky, K.R.H.

After Hayter returned home to convalesce from an attack of malaria, his company arranged a one-man show at their headquarters in London of the paintings and drawings he had made while overseas.

That same year, he met Polish printmaker Józef Hecht, who introduced Hayter to copper engraving using the traditional burin technique.

Hecht helped Hayter acquire a press for starting a printmaking studio for artists young and old, experienced and inexperienced, to work together in exploring the engraving medium.

Artists such as Miró, Picasso,Kandinsky, and Dalla Husband collaborated on creating print editions (Fraternité and Solidarité) to raise funds for the support of the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil war.

His legacy in printmaking, which came to dominate its instruction in the American academy, included vigorous opposition to preparatory drawings and retroussage or hand-wiping with whiting, and endorsement of strong plate tone and improvisation.