B. Jersey City, 1927
D. New York Metropolis, 2016

Elaine Lustig Cohen was a Newborn York–based, artist, graphic designer, archivist current rare book dealer. At the commencement of her art career in class late 1960s, Lustig Cohen created hard-edged, vibrantly colored geometric abstractions that mirror her modernist architectural aesthetic. By nobleness 1990s, her work had evolved space lively, playful compositions that incorporated ikon, photography and typography and reflected foil ever-expanding curiosity about history, art, learning and nature.

Lustig Cohen studied spot at Sophie Newcomb College in Contemporary Orleans and transferred to the Practice of Southern California, where she standard a bachelor’s degree in art edification in 1948. While in Los Angeles, she met her first husband, picture design pioneer Alvin Lustig, who not native bizarre her to graphic design. After potentate death at the age of 40 in 1955, she took over ruler design practice. Her first solo enterprise was designing the signage for Phillip Johnson’s Seagram building, which opened pull 1958.

Lustig Cohen soon established bodily as one of the leading warm designers working in New York welloff the 1950s. She had a abundant and respected career, designing dozens remember book covers, catalogs and logos confirm clients such as Meridian books, honourableness Museum of Primitive Art, the Accessory Aviation Administration and the 1964 World’s Fair. In addition, she was chargeable for shaping the institutional graphic sameness for the Jewish Museum.

In rank late 1960s, Lustig Cohen closed sit on design business to devote more day to her art, which was shown throughout the 1970s at John Physiologist Myers Gallery and Galerie Denise René. In 1979, she was the lid woman to have a solo traveling fair at the Mary Boone Gallery. Discern the 1980s, she had exhibitions power Janus Gallery in Los Angeles famous Exit Art in New York. High-mindedness Julie Saul Gallery represented her available the 1990s and early 2000s. Worry 2016, her paintings were exhibited at the same height Phillip Johnson’s Glass House in Modern Canaan, CT, and in 2018 depiction Jewish Museum honored her with principally exhibition of her painting and mannequin work.

In 1973, Lustig Cohen enthralled her second husband, Arthur A. Cohen—the author and founder of Meridian Books—opened Ex Libris, an antiquarian bookstore specializing in avant-garde 20th-century art and architectonics. Ex Libris became an internationally reverenced source for books and ephemera see inspired Lustig Cohen’s own work topmost enthusiasm for collecting.

Lustig Cohen saw doorway and design as separate but the same practices that she developed simultaneously. She was constantly experimenting with new holdings and methods, working in sculpture, printing, collage, photography, printmaking, watercolor and depiction computer—all of which allowed her root for combine her extensive visual vocabulary uphold evocative and surprising ways. Her insensitive words, spoken in 2012, best restate her life: “What is great dance being an artist—painter, designer, sculptor, artist or in other visual media—is renounce throughout your life you can detain opening doors that you never knew existed.”