Irving Amen, painter and printmaker, was born in New York City on 25 July 1918. He was awarded a scholarship to the Pratt Institute when he was fourteen years old and he spent seven years in life classes perfecting his drawing. He also studied at the Art Students League in New York and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. Amen’s first exhibition was held at the New School for Social Research and his second at the Smithsonian Institution in 1949. In 1950 he traveled to Paris to study for a year. Upon his return to the United States, he had one man shows in New York and Washington, DC.

Amen taught sculpture and printmaking classes at the Pratt Institute in 1961 and at the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana in 1962. Commissions included a Peace Medal in honor of the Vietnam War and designs for twelve stained glass windows, each sixteen feet high, depicting the Twelve Tribes of Israel, for the Agudas Achim Synagogue in Columbus, Ohio.

He was a member of the American Color Print Society, Artists Equity, Audubon Artists, Boston Printmakers, International Institute of Arts and Letters, International Society of Wood Engravers (Zurich), and the Society of American Graphic Artists. Amen's work was included in numerous international and national exhibitions and in 1949 he was included in the exhibition Master Prints at the Museum of Modern Art.

Amen’s work is represented in the Albertina Museum, Vienna; Bezalel National Museum, Jerusalem; Bibliotheque nationale, Paris; Bibliotheque Royale, Brussels; Museum of Fine Art Boston; Cincinnati Museum of Art; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; Library of Congress, Washington; Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, New York; New York Public Library; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum; and Stadtische Museum, Wilberfeld, Germany.

Irving Amen died in Coconut Creek, Florida on 21 November 2011.