Emil Armin
(1883 - 1971)
Emil Armin was born in Radautz, Austria-Hungary, a province now in Romania. His father was an amateur artist who taught his son woodcarving.
Orphaned at the age of ten, Armin was encouraged by friends to follow a career in art and he moved to Chernivtsi (now part of Ukraine) at the age of 18 to pursue his studies. In 1905 Armin emigrated to the United States, settling in Chicago with siblings who had preceded him there. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago with George Bellows, Randall Davey and Albert Krehbiel—all of whom worked and/or lived in northern New Mexico. He visited the famous 1913 Armory Show of avant garde art in New York and became a convert to modernism. Financial privations interrupted his studies but Armin persevered and graduated from the Art Institute in 1920.
For several years he shared a studio with Todros Geller, whose work is also represented here.
Armin began traveling to New Mexico in 1928, producing a body of work that included woodblock and linocut prints, oils and watercolors depicting scenes in and around Santa Fe and Taos. He participated in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Public Works Art Program (PWAP) during the Depression and, like Geller, was on the art faculty at Chicago’s Hull House. Notations on the mount of Armin’s linocut ‘American Indian Dance’ indicate that it depicts the annual Buffalo Dance at San Ildefonso Pueblo, northwest of Santa Fe.
Orphaned at the age of ten, Armin was encouraged by friends to follow a career in art and he moved to Chernivtsi (now part of Ukraine) at the age of 18 to pursue his studies. In 1905 Armin emigrated to the United States, settling in Chicago with siblings who had preceded him there. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago with George Bellows, Randall Davey and Albert Krehbiel—all of whom worked and/or lived in northern New Mexico. He visited the famous 1913 Armory Show of avant garde art in New York and became a convert to modernism. Financial privations interrupted his studies but Armin persevered and graduated from the Art Institute in 1920.
For several years he shared a studio with Todros Geller, whose work is also represented here.
Armin began traveling to New Mexico in 1928, producing a body of work that included woodblock and linocut prints, oils and watercolors depicting scenes in and around Santa Fe and Taos. He participated in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Public Works Art Program (PWAP) during the Depression and, like Geller, was on the art faculty at Chicago’s Hull House. Notations on the mount of Armin’s linocut ‘American Indian Dance’ indicate that it depicts the annual Buffalo Dance at San Ildefonso Pueblo, northwest of Santa Fe.