Three Men and a Fish

Elizabeth Olds was one of the first American artists to use silkscreen—traditionally a commercial process—for fine art. It was the late 1930s and Olds was working for the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project in New York City. She was among a handful of artists whose experiments made silkscreen a workable medium for getting colorful, broadly appealing prints to the masses relatively cheaply. Olds's comic facility is obvious in her original figure types.