Skip to main content
Anton Schutz
1894–1977
BirthplaceBerndorf, Germany
Death placeWhite Plains, New York, United States of America
BiographyAnton Schutz is noted for his architectural etchings of New York City that celebrate the grandeur of the modern city. Schutz was born near Trier, Germany. In 1912, he entered the Technische Universität München (Technical University of Munich), where as a student of architecture he learned the technique of etching as a means of reproducing building plans. During World War I, Schutz served in the German army. Back in Munich by 1919, he resumed his studies in architecture and mechanical engineering while also studying printmaking at the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste (Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts) with portrait and landscape painter Hermann Gröber (1865-1935). Schutz began his career making etchings of German landscapes and cityscapes that were admired for their skilled exactitude.
In 1924, concerned with Germany's unstable economic and political conditions, Schutz emigrated to New York City, where he became a studio assistant to Joseph Pennell (1857–1926), the esteemed printmaker who taught intaglio at the Art Students League. Schutz soon began to create his own etchings of the modern, progressive city growing around him, encouraged by his first American exhibition at New York's Anderson Gallery. In 1925 the local Chamber of Commerce commissioned him to execute twelve etchings documenting the urban landscape to commemorate the three-hundredth anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam (now New York). In 1928 and 1929, the New York Times engaged Schutz to make etched views of Moscow, China, and Japan. Reproductions of his prints in newspapers and in the Encyclopedia Britannica prompted commissions for etchings of corporate headquarters and business districts in such cities as Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and several European capitals. Yet New York's dynamic architecture and skyline inspired him to create more etchings than any other place.
Until the Depression damaged the market for fine art prints, Schutz's precisely drawn etchings were commercially successful; he regularly exhibited in galleries and etching society shows in New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, and Philadelphia. To supplement his etching career, in 1925 Schutz founded the New York Graphic Society, Inc., which marketed original graphic art. After World War II, under his leadership, the company became the world's largest publisher of color art reproductions, branching out to art book publishing in 1958; in 1966, Time, Inc. purchased Schutz's thriving business. The artist himself had ceased printmaking in 1940, when he cancelled most of his copper plates and donated them as scrap metal in support of America's war effort. Thereafter he devoted himself to publishing art reproductions, traveling the world between 1940 and 1961 to document world art for the United Nations. Although Schutz made hundreds of prints in the course of his career, the exact number is not known.
In 1924, concerned with Germany's unstable economic and political conditions, Schutz emigrated to New York City, where he became a studio assistant to Joseph Pennell (1857–1926), the esteemed printmaker who taught intaglio at the Art Students League. Schutz soon began to create his own etchings of the modern, progressive city growing around him, encouraged by his first American exhibition at New York's Anderson Gallery. In 1925 the local Chamber of Commerce commissioned him to execute twelve etchings documenting the urban landscape to commemorate the three-hundredth anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam (now New York). In 1928 and 1929, the New York Times engaged Schutz to make etched views of Moscow, China, and Japan. Reproductions of his prints in newspapers and in the Encyclopedia Britannica prompted commissions for etchings of corporate headquarters and business districts in such cities as Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and several European capitals. Yet New York's dynamic architecture and skyline inspired him to create more etchings than any other place.
Until the Depression damaged the market for fine art prints, Schutz's precisely drawn etchings were commercially successful; he regularly exhibited in galleries and etching society shows in New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, and Philadelphia. To supplement his etching career, in 1925 Schutz founded the New York Graphic Society, Inc., which marketed original graphic art. After World War II, under his leadership, the company became the world's largest publisher of color art reproductions, branching out to art book publishing in 1958; in 1966, Time, Inc. purchased Schutz's thriving business. The artist himself had ceased printmaking in 1940, when he cancelled most of his copper plates and donated them as scrap metal in support of America's war effort. Thereafter he devoted himself to publishing art reproductions, traveling the world between 1940 and 1961 to document world art for the United Nations. Although Schutz made hundreds of prints in the course of his career, the exact number is not known.