Isolde Baumgart, printmaker and graphic designer, was born on 3 December 1935 in Munich, Germany. She studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin and the Fine Arts School of Kassel with Hans Leistikow and Hans Georg Hillmann. As a student at Kassel, she befriended printmaker Roger Platiel, who encouraged her to further her studies at Stanley William Hayter’s famous experimental printmaking workshop, Atelier 17, in Paris. There, she met the American graphic artist Jim Monson, who she would later marry and with whom she would occasionally collaborate.

In addition to her fine art printmaking, Baumgart designed several Deutsche Bundespost (German Post) stamps for many decades and was a poster designer for a variety of events (Munich Fair, the Bicentenary of the French Revolution, etc.). Baumgart was a chief designer employed by the Neue Filmkunst and helped to revolutionized German film advertising. In 2014, Adrian Curry described her as “a minimalist at heart who knew the power of a strong photograph and bold type, but who was also not afraid of the occasional outside-the-box flourish.”

In 1965, Baumgart started teaching at the American Center in Paris. She moved to the United States in 1979 and settled in New England. She taught at the University of Connecticut, Storrs between 1980 and 1984. Other teaching assignments included two years at the Merz Akademie of Stuttgart between 1984 and 1986 and she was a guest professor at the University of Kassel between 1987 and 1989. She moved to France in 1996.

She was a member of the International Graphic Alliance (AGI), through whom she exhibited in Europe, Japan, and the United States. The work of Isolde Barmgart is represented in the collections of the Kunstbibliothek, Berlin; the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; Die Neue Sammlung (The Design Museum), Munich; the National Gallery, Oslo; the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; the Lilley Museum of Art, University of Nevada, Reno; the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart; the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee; and the University Art Collection, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

Isolde Baumgart passed away on 3 November 2011 in Kassel, Germany.