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

Elaine Lustig Cohen was a New York–based, artist, graphic designer, archivist and rare book dealer. At the start of her art career in the late 1960s, Lustig Cohen created hard-edged, vibrantly colored geometric abstractions that reflected her modernist architectural aesthetic. By the 1990s, her work had evolved into lively, playful compositions that incorporated collage, photography and typography and reflected her ever-expanding curiosity about history, art, literature and nature.

Lustig Cohen studied art at Sophie Newcomb College in New Orleans and transferred to the University of Southern California, where she received a bachelor’s degree in art education in 1948. While in Los Angeles, she met her first husband, the design pioneer Alvin Lustig, who introduced her to graphic design. After his death at the age of 40 in 1955, she took over his design practice. Her first solo project was designing the signage for Phillip Johnson’s Seagram building, which opened in 1958.

Lustig Cohen soon established herself as one of the leading female designers working in New York in the 1950s. She had a prolific and respected career, designing dozens of book covers, catalogs and logos for clients such as Meridian books, the Museum of Primitive Art, the Federal Aviation Administration and the 1964 World’s Fair. In addition, she was responsible for shaping the institutional graphic identity for the Jewish Museum.

In the late 1960s, Lustig Cohen closed her design business to devote more time to her art, which was shown throughout the 1970s at John Bernard Myers Gallery and Galerie Denise René. In 1979, she was the first woman to have a solo exhibition at the Mary Boone Gallery. In the 1980s, she had exhibitions at Janus Gallery in Los Angeles and Exit Art in New York. The Julie Saul Gallery represented her throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2016, her paintings were exhibited at Phillip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, CT, and in 2018 the Jewish Museum honored her with an exhibition of her painting and design work.

In 1973, Lustig Cohen and 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 architecture. Ex Libris became an internationally respected source for books and ephemera and inspired Lustig Cohen’s own work and enthusiasm for collecting.

Lustig Cohen saw art and design as separate but equal practices that she developed simultaneously. She was constantly experimenting with new materials and methods, working in sculpture, letterpress, collage, photography, printmaking, watercolor and the computer—all of which allowed her to combine her extensive visual vocabulary in evocative and surprising ways. Her own words, spoken in 2012, best summarize her life: “What is great about being an artist—painter, designer, sculptor, photographer or in other visual media—is that throughout your life you can keep opening doors that you never knew existed.”