Michael Knigin, American (1942 - 2011)<br/><br/>Michael Knigin was born in 1942 in Brooklyn, NY. He attended and graduated from Tyler School of Art, Temple University. During his junior year, he was awarded a Ford Foundation Grant to study fine art lithography at the renowned Tamarind Lithography Workshop, in Los Angeles.<br/><br/>After graduating college in 1966, Knigin started teaching at the Pratt Graphic Center in Manhattan, an extension of the Pratt Institute, devoted to fine arts and graphic prints. There he started a fine art lithography workshop. After a year and a half he opened his own publishing company, Chiron Press, and added a silkscreen printing facility. This was the first facility in the United States that combined lithography and screen-printing. The shop remained in existence for over seven years, printing and publishing editions for the most renowned contemporary artists, including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Paul Jenkins. In 1970 and 1971 he co-authored two books on lithography, which were published by Van Nostrand/Reinhold. One of these books was a textbook on fine art lithography and was used extensively in schools in the United States and Britain. After selling Chiron Press in 1974, Knigin was invited by the Israel Museum and the Jerusalem Foundation to establish the first professional lithography workshop in Israel and to train a group of young Israeli artists. While in Israel, he collaborated with the Ministry of Labor and Education, along with nationally and internationally known artists from Israel, the United States and Europe. After his tenure at the graphic center, he returned to New York and preceded to create his own prints and paintings. At that time, Knigin was appointed a Professor at Pratt Institute, where he still teaches.