Keith Anden Achepohl, printmaker, painter, and educator, was born April 11, 1934, in Chicago, Illinois. He earned his BA from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois; his MFA in printmaking in 1960 from the University of Iowa, where he studied with Mauricio Lasansky; and his DFA degree in 1989 from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.

His teaching career included teaching printmaking at the University of Iowa between 1964 and 1967, he was associate professor at Pacific Lutheran University between 1969 and 1972, and he returned to the University of Iowa in 1972 as an associate professor and in 1978 he was elevated to full professorship. Beginning in 1996, he served as director of the University of Iowa Summer in Venice Program and, in 2001, the University named him the Elizabeth M. Stanley Professor in the Arts.

He was awarded the Tiffany Foundation Award in 1966; the Fulbright Senior Lectureship Award in 1979, 1980, and 1984; the Gold Medal in Printmaking at the Mediterranean Biennale in Egypt in 1982; and the Edmondson Award from the Des Moines Art Center in 1990. His work is included in museums around the world, including the Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; the Philadelphia Art Museum, Pennsylvania; Seattle Art Museum, Washington; the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid; and the Kobe Art Museum, Kobe, Japan.

Keith Anden Achephol died in Eugene, Oregon on 24 February 2018.