Pegasus

Like many of his fellow Surrealists, Stanley William Hayter frequently enlisted the gods and heroes of Greek mythology as subjects, as in his unconventional interpretation of the birth of the winged horse Pegasus. According to legend, Pegasus sprang forth from the blood of the Gorgon Medusa, a snake-haired monster decapitated by the hero Perseus. To express the theme of life emerging from death, Hayter deftly combined dynamic figures, vigorous lines, and vivid colors, while veering strongly toward abstraction. His inspiration for this complex subject may have been a version by his print studio director Leo Katz (Mia 2010.48.2), produced some six years earlier.