Andre Racz, painter, printmaker, educator and sculptor, was born in Cluj, Romania on November 21, 1916. He graduated from the University of Bucharest in 1935 and came to the U.S. in 1939 as a member of the Romanian Art Commission in connection with the New York World’s Fair. He then settled in New York where he studied printmaking at Atelier 17 in the 1940s.

Among Racz's works were a variety of illustrated books and volumes of poetry, including the 1950 edition of Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral's Nobel Prize-winning Poems de las Madres. In addition to his career as a fine artist, Racz was a professor of painting and sculpture at Columbia University from 1951 to 1983, at which point he was named a Professor Emeritus and was awarded a Bancroft Distinguished Retired Teacher award. He divided his spare time between his homes in New Nersey and Vinalhaven, Maine, where he found great inspiration in natural flora and fauna of the Fox Island surroundings. He had numerous solo exhibitions in Europe, South America, and the United States, and the Museum of Modern Art purchased over two dozen of his prints. Among his awards were the Guggenheim fellowship in printmaking in 1956 and a Fullbright scholar grant to study in Chile in 1957.

Racz was a member of  the Society of American Graphic Artists and the American Association of University Professors. His works are included in the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, The National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Allentown Art Museum, PI; the Davis Museum at Wellesly College, MA; the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Salzburg Museum, Austria; and the National Gallery of Australia. He authored the following portfolios: The Reign of Claws (1945), XII Prophets of Aleijadinho (1947), Via Crucis (1948), Mother and Child (1949), and Canciones Negras (1953).

Andre Racz died in Englewood, New Jersey on September 29, 1994.

Selected exhibitions:
NYC, 1943 (solo); Art of this Century, 1944; MOMA Traveling Exh., 1944-46; LOC, 1945, 1946; NAD, 1945; Phila., 1945 (solo); WMAA, 1949, 1962; PAFA Annual, 1953; 50 Yrs Am Art, MOMA, Paris, London, Belgrade & Barcelona, ​​1955; First Int Biennial, Mexico, 1958; First Biennial Religious Art, Salzburg, Austria, 1958; Int Watercolor Biennial, Brooklyn Mus, 1961; Nat Inst Arts & Lett, New York, 1968. Awards: Guggenheim fel printmaking, 1956; Fulbright res scholar, Chile, 1957; Ford Foundation, 1962.

Awards and recognition:
1953: Erickson Prize for intaglio printmaking
1955: Noyes First Prize, intaglio printmaking, Society of Graphic Artists
1956: Guggenheim Fellowship
1957: Fullbright Research Scholar Grant
1959: Purchase Prize, University of Kentucky
1983: Bancroft Award for Distinguished Retiring Teachers