Studio Interior #1 is a drypoint from 1935 by American artist Armin Landeck. It is pencil signed and titled and inscribed Artists Proof 6/10. The reference is Kraeft 57. This impression was probably printed later with an assistant. It is on an ivory wove paper and the platemark measures 7-15/16 x 10-9/16 inches.
According to Landeck, this was the interior of his first studio in Cornwall, Connecticut. The artist’s etching press dominates the foreground, in the back are cabinets for paper. On the far wall is hung an impression of Landeck's 1932 lithograph, View of New York. Author and print scholar Albert Reese commented about this print in the Kraeft raisonné of Landeck's prints: “It is with his drypoint Studio Interior (No.1), however, that Landeck gets into his full stride. This is a technical achievement of the first water; the detail however small is subordinate to the design; there is a harmony and flow of line that integrates the component units of the composition in a rhythmic whole - witness, for instance the open drawers of the table that carry the planes of the table-top to the bench below and which is further sustained by the bed of the etching press; the light and shade are well distributed and for richness of tone the quality of the drypoint is superb.”
Like many depression era printmakers Landeck often did not print a completed edition, preferring to pull a few proofs to send to shows and perhaps sell one every now and then. Editions would be printed at a later date.
Armin Landeck, printmaker and educator, was born in Crandon, Wisconsin on 4 June 1905. He studied at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and received his Bachelor's degree in architecture from Columbia University in 1927. While in New York, he studied life drawing with George B. Bridgman at the Art Students’ League.
Landeck studied printmaking at Columbia University and produced his first prints in 1927. He married that same year and consequently travelled for eighteen months in Europe rendering the architecture in drawing and etching. Upon his return home in 1929, he was unable to procure employment as an architect so he moved to East Cornwall, Connecticut and made the decision to focus on printmaking and teaching. In 1931, he joined the faculty of the Brearly School, an all-girls private school located on the upper east side of Manhattan, and taught there until his retirement in 1958.
In the fall of 1934, Landeck joined forces with fellow artist Martin Lewis when they opened the School for Printmakers at George Miller’s Fourteenth Street lithography studio. They offered classes on lithography, etching, drypoint, mezzotint, and wood engraving but their school was forced to close in 1935 due to the economy. Landeck met Stanley William Hayter in the 1940s and began to work at Aterlier 17 where he made his first engraving.
He was a member of and exhibited with the Society of American Etchers and the Society of American Graphic Artists. Landeck was elected an Academician in the National Academy of Design and was a member of the Institute of Arts and Letters. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1953.
Landeck’s work is represented in the collections of the Georgia Museum of Art, Athens; the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; the Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; the Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas; the British Museum, London; the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; and the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Armin Landeck died in Litchfield, Connecticut on 1 December 1984.
