Nicholas Frank de Matties, painter, printmaker and teacher, was born on October 13, 1939, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His formal studies were at Long Beach State College and the Chicago Institute of Design, where he earned his Masters Degree in printmaking.  Two instructors who greatly influenced his work were Dick Swift and Misch Kohn. De Matties worked at Atelier 17 in Paris in the late 1950s or early 1960s. De Matties taught printmaking and drawing at San Diego State College between 1967 and 1969 and then became assistant professor of printmaking and drawing at Mount Saint Mary's College in Los Angeles between 1969 and 1970, and in 1972 he was visiting professor of printmaking at Oregon University.

In 1971, de Matties founded and became director of the Pacific Northwest Graphics Workshop located outside of Junction City along the Oregon Coast Range. This workshop was based upon the tenets of Hayter's Atelier 17. It was not a formal school but a workshop and his position was that of advisor not teacher and the limited number of enrollees allowed for experimentation. In 1972 he began teaching printmaking at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. His works are represented in the Bibliotheque nationale de France, Library of Congress, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, MOMA San Francisco, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Portland Museum of Art and Columbia University.

Nick DeMatties died in Washington, DC on April 7, 2021.