During the second half of the 1950’s Schanker continued working on and exhibiting his prints.  A 1956 Time article credits Schanker “with a revival of printmaking with rich color harmonies in what traditionally was a black and white medium.”  His work was featured at the Brooklyn Museum showing of “14 Painter-Printmakers from the Graphic Circle.” He continued a friendship with Stanley Hayter with whom he had shared a studio for the original Atelier 17 New York.  Also in 1956, Arts magazine discussed a unique “plaster” print, Circular Forms #6, by Schanker selected for the Brooklyn Museum Print Annual.  Another large color print, Abstract Landscape No. 1, was noted as receiving the purchase prize at this show. While discussing the renaissance in printmaking it describes Schanker as “having put a personal stamp to a traditional medium.”  His works were also chosen for exhibition at the 1956 Brooklyn Museum “Golden Years of American Drawings 1905-1956.

1958 saw the realization of a project begun in 1951 at Atelier 17 New York.  It produced a limited (50 numbered copies) portfolio of “21 Etchings and Poems,” depicted by a number of noted graphic artists and poets and published by the Morris Gallery in New York.

Simultaneously with his printmaking, Schanker, during this decade, developed his concentration on the circle with his many iterations of “Circle Image” works. Many of these took the form of large oils on canvas.  These completely abstract works were frequently black circles on a white field with some examples of other color variations.  Some also were overlain with a light color “dot” effect.

One example of this genre was included in the 1956 Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors exhibit and another was selected for the Rome-New York Art Foundation exhibition. 

During the 1950’s one of the most highly regarded galleries on 57^th street in New York City was that run by Grace Borgenicht who had attended classes at Atelier 17 herself.  Between 1951 and 1958 Schanker’s Circle Image oils were in at least six group shows with contemporaries including. Milton Avery, Ilya Bolotowsky, George Constant, Willem De Kooning, and Jimmy Ernst.  Schanker was also featured in four (52, 53, 55, 57,) one man shows of his paintings at the same gallery.

The decade ended with a one man show of “New Paintings,” in 1959 at the Stuttman Gallery on Madison Avenue in New York and another at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.