Garo Zareh Antreasian (1922–2018), an American artist of Armenian descent born in Indianapolis, Indiana, to parents who survived the 1915 Armenian genocide, discovered lithography at age seventeen while attending Arsenal Technical High School, using abandoned equipment there. He earned a BFA from the Herron School of Art in 1948, served as a combat artist in the Pacific during World War II, and then trained under Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 and Will Barnet at the Art Students League of New York. Shortly after graduating, he joined the Herron faculty as an instructor, introducing printmaking to the curriculum, and received the Mary Milliken Memorial Traveling Scholarship.
In 1960, Antreasian co-founded the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, serving as its inaugural technical director and master printer—a pivotal role that leveraged his self-taught expertise to revive fine art lithography in America. He relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1964 to teach at the University of New Mexico, where he became department chairman, professor emeritus upon retiring in 1988, and instrumental in moving Tamarind to UNM as the Tamarind Institute. Married to Jeanne Glascock since 1946, he balanced family life with a career marked by global lectures, including a 1985 Fulbright in Brazil, and honors like Herron’s Distinguished Alumnus award (1972) and honorary doctorates from Indiana University and Purdue.
Antreasian excelled as a lithographer and painter, evolving from early representational prints to hard-edge abstraction in the 1970s, renowned for his rainbow roll technique; a 1982 trip to Turkey inspired integrations of Arabic calligraphy and Islamic motifs. Major works include the monumental mosaic mural *Here I Grew Up* (1963) at Indiana’s Government Center North, depicting Abraham Lincoln’s youth; *Quantum IV* (1966); *Glow Box* (1965); and Tamarind prints like *Untitled (V/VII)* (1976) and *Y’es Em* (1991). His oeuvre resides in prestigious collections, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Smithsonian.
Antreasian’s enduring legacy lies in democratizing lithography through Tamarind, training master printers and authoring the seminal *Tamarind Book of Lithography: Art and Techniques* (1971, with Clinton Adams), alongside his 2016 memoir *Reflections on Life and Art* and print catalogue raisonné. As mentor to generations, he elevated American printmaking from obscurity to innovation.
