Armin Landeck was born in Crandon, Wisconsin, June 4, 1905. He studied first at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor before entering Columbia University in New York City where he received a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1927. During 1928 he and his wife traveled and studied art in Europe, returning after the collapse of the stock market in 1929. Although he became interested in printmaking in 1927, it was while he was in Europe that he produced his first large body of prints. Unable to find work as an architect upon his return, he turned his attention to printmaking, producing a remarkable body of work over the following sixty years.
During the early thirties he became friends with Martin Lewis and in 1934 opened the School for Printmakers with Martin Lewis and the lithographic printer, George Miller. Unfortunately, the school closed in early 1935, a victim of the Depression. For a short period in 1941 he studied engraving with Stanley William Hayter at the New School for Social Research. His later work is representative of his study with Hayter, as most of his prints from this point on were engravings with drypoint or pure engravings.
