Fred Becker

"Frederick G. Becker was born in Oakland, Calif., in 1913 and reared in Hollywood, where his father, Frederick Becker Sr., was an actor in silent films. After study at the Otis Art Institute, the younger Becker moved to New York in 1933 to study architecture at New York University, but abandoned it for the freer mediums of drawing and printmaking. Drafted during World War II, he returned to civilian life in 1946, and then began teaching at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. In 1948 he joined the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, where he established a
printmaking department. He taught there for 20 years before going to the University of Massachusetts.

Fred Becker’s career began in the 1930s with quirky characterizations of musicians made during frequent visits to Manhattan jazz clubs and lively observations of the urban scene, done with a Surrealist touch.

In 1935, he was accepted by the Graphic Arts Division of the Federal Art Project administered by the Works Project Administration. His etchings and wood engravings brought him his first one-man show, at the Marion Willard Gallery in 1938. But in 1940 he was drawn to Atelier 17, the workshop
established by the British engraver Stanley William Hayter. There Becker turned to abstraction, developing technical expertise while using various
intaglio techniques and color printing methods developed by or with Hayter.

His early work was related to Surrealism and Constructivism, but by the
mid-1950s Becker was using his skilled draftsmanship in a gestural, Abstract Expressionist mode. Throughout the rest of his career he continued to join his technical proficiency with experimentation, and his approach to subject matter became highly individualistic."