Nan O. Lurie, painter and printmaker, was born in 1910 in Odessa, Russia and raised in New York City. She received a scholarship to attend the Art Students League where she studied with Yasuo Kuniyoshi. From 1935 to 1942, Lurie worked in the New York WPA Graphic Art Division of the Federal Art Project and produced lithographs and color serigraphs.

Lurie is noted for her stark portrayal of urban life: she depicted the struggles of the working class, particularly during the Depression, and the hardships encountered daily by African Americans.

Nan Lurie's work was included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art annuals, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Corcoran Gallery biennial in 1943. She received a fellowship to the Yaddo Colony where she met the poet and novelist Kenneth Fearing. They were married on 18 June 1945 and divorced seven years later.

The work of Nan O. Lurie is represented in the permanent collections of the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; the Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, Florida; the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska Lincoln; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Newark Museum, New Jersey; the Philadelphia Museum, Pennsylvania; the St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri; the Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Nan O. Lurie died in Chicago in 1985.