Bass, Saul (08 May 1920–25 April 1996), graphic designer, was born in New York City to Aaron Bass, a furrier, and Pauline Feldman Bass. He grew up in the Bronx and attended public schools, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen. From an early age, he was constantly drawing and sketching, and by his early teens he knew that he wanted to become what was then known as a commercial artist. After graduating from public high school in 1936 he received a scholarship to the Art Students League in New York City, where he studied until 1939. He had already launched his career as a freelance graphic designer after leaving high school, and he continued that career in New York until 1946. He also studied design at Brooklyn College during the academic year 1944–1945....
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Bass, Saul (1920-1996), graphic designer
Ann T. Keene
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Bell, Mary A. (1873-1941), artist
Theresa Leininger-Miller
Bell, Mary A. (02 July 1873–20 September 1941), artist, was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of James F. Bell and Susanna County, probably laborers. Very little is known about Bell’s early life. As an African American, she presumably attended segregated schools. It is unlikely that she ever received artistic training; she declared that she drew “without human teaching.” She probably worked as a domestic servant, laundress, or seamstress beginning in her teenage years, and she may have traveled extensively; Bell said she “lived all around” before World War I. Since she does not appear in early twentieth-century city directories or census records in Washington, D.C., or Boston, Massachusetts, and because she apparently never married or had children, it is likely that she resided with her various employers....
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Chamberlain, Samuel V. (28 October 1895–10 January 1975), graphic artist, photographer, and gourmet food writer
Karen Patricia Heath
Chamberlain, Samuel V. (28 October 1895–10 January 1975), graphic artist, photographer, and gourmet food writer, was born Samuel Vance Chamberlain in Cresco, Iowa, the son of Dr. George Ellsworth Chamberlain, a surgeon, and Cora Lee Summers. In 1901 the family moved to Aberdeen, Washington, where Chamberlain undertook his early education. In ...
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Feininger, Lyonel Charles Adrian (1871-1956), artist
Martin R. Kalfatovic
Feininger, Lyonel Charles Adrian (17 July 1871–13 January 1956), artist, was born in New York City, the son of Karl (sometimes called Charles) Feininger, a violinist and composer, and Elizabeth Cecilia Lutz, a singer and pianist. While attending a public grammar school, Feininger studied violin with his father, giving his first performances at age twelve. Though his father had planned a musical career for him, Feininger showed an early interest in drawing and modern technology. He united these interests in detailed drawings of locomotives, ships, and bicycles. His parents, though apparently dismayed at Feininger’s interest in drawing over music, provided him with art training by Hilda Marshall, a former pupil of ...
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Fisher, Avery Robert (1906-1994), entrepreneur, graphic designer, and audio engineer
André Millard
Fisher, Avery Robert (04 March 1906–26 February 1994), entrepreneur, graphic designer, and audio engineer, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of six children of Charles Fisher and Mary Byrach Fisher, both Russian immigrants. Young Avery was captivated by his father's extensive record collection and this began his lifelong love of classical music. He entered New York University (NYU) in 1924, majoring in biology and English. After graduating in 1929 he joined an advertising agency and came into contact with several publishing companies who were his clients. He got a job as a graphic designer with G. P. Putnam's Sons and then joined Dodd, Mead & Company in 1933, where he worked for the next ten years. He recalled his work in graphic design with great pride and claimed that designing books was his first love. He said that a beautiful typographic design was as pleasing to the eye as listening to music was pleasing to the ear. In 1941 he married Janet Cane; the couple had three children....
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Glaser, Milton (26 June 1929–26 June 2020), graphic designer
Ann T. Keene
Glaser, Milton (26 June 1929–26 June 2020), graphic designer, was born in the Bronx, New York, to Eugene Glaser, the owner of a dry-cleaning and tailor shop, and Eleanor Bergman Glaser, Jewish immigrants from Hungary who shared the left-leaning politics of their neighbors. As a child he exhibited artistic talent and received drawing lessons from the émigré social realists ...
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Penfield, Edward (1866-1925), artist and designer
Karen L. Carter
Penfield, Edward (02 June 1866–08 February 1925), artist and designer, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Josiah Penfield, a merchant, and Ellen Locke Moore. He grew up in Brooklyn and attended schools there, but not much is known of his early childhood. In 1881 Penfield began working for Harper and Brothers in New York. In 1889 he enrolled in the Art Students League in Manhattan, where he studied periodically until 1895. At the Art Students League, he studied under George deForest Brush, an academic painter who also admired French impressionism and instilled in his students an appreciation for European art....
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Rand, Paul (1914-1996), graphic designer
Ann T. Keene
Rand, Paul (15 August 1914–26 November 1996), graphic designer, was born Peretz Rosenbaum in Brooklyn, New York, to Itzhak Yehuda Rosenbaum, a Polish immigrant, and Leah Rosenbaum (maiden name is unknown). The family, which also included his twin brother, Fishel, and an older sister, were strict Orthodox Jews who made their home in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, where the elder Rosenbaums ran a grocery store. Peretz and his twin were inseparable as children, attending both public school and yeshiva, and manifested independence from an early age, often venturing outside the neighborhood to explore the secular world and attempting to bend and break the rules of Jewish tradition. Peretz showed an artistic aptitude from the time he was a toddler, drawing and sketching whenever he could find pencil and paper. Newspaper cartoon strips, especially “Krazy Kat,” were an early influence, and much to his father's disapproval he became a devotee of comic books. As he grew older, he found himself confronting and rejecting the strictures of his religious tradition at every turn, beginning with his insistence on drawing human figures—a forbidden act in the eyes of Orthodox Jewry....
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Rand, Paul (1914-1996)
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Steinberg, Saul (1914-1999), graphic artist
James Ross Moore
Steinberg, Saul (15 June 1914–12 May 1999), graphic artist, was born in Râmincul-Sarat, Romania, the son of Moritz Steinberg, a printer and bookbinder, and Rosa Iacobson Steinberg. In later years, Steinberg recalled Romania as “a masquerade country.” The work of Steinberg's life was largely concerned with masks of reality and the reality of masks. The only difference between Americans and others, he noted, was that they wore their masks more lightly....
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