Enrico Arno was born in 1913 in Mannheim, Germany, raised in Berlin and attended Vereinigte Staatsschulen fur freie und angewandte Kunst. His studies in painting, lettering and calligraphy were thwarted by the Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany, when he was deemed 'a mongrel in the first degree' due to his maternal Jewish lineage. Fleeing from the Nazis led him throughout Italy and eventually to the United States, where he began working as a book-jacket and record-cover designer in 1947. Arno's first published illustration was in 1955, for Jean Baptiste Moliere's The Misanthrope: Comedy in Five Acts, 1666. . This activated a long career as an artist, illustrator and teacher, with him mastering the tedious task of variation in his art form. At the age of sixty-seven, Enrico Arno passed away in his home in Long Island.
Biographical source: Something about the Author . Volume 43, 1986.
From the guide to the Enrico Arno Collection, 1955-1980, (University of Minnesota Libraries Children's Literature Research Collections [clrc])
