Services for Michael Knigin Will Be Held Friday

Michael Knigin, an East Hampton artist who helped start the digital computer art revolution, died on Wednesday, after a long battle with lung cancer. He was 68.

 Throughout his life, Knigin became known internationally for his many varied series—from social commentary, to the environment, birds, flowers, fish, vintage nudes, carnival animals, fireworks, waves, and outer space scenes. He has been in over 30 one-man shows, and his work has been included in over 150 group shows around the world.

Since childhood, his dream was to create a series about a sensitive subject that haunted him all his life—the Holocaust. In 1975, while he was living in Brooklyn, he was hired by the Israel Museum and the Jerusalem Foundation, to see real images of the Holocaust first-hand, He traveled to Israel to go to the Holocaust Museum and photograph their archives, with images of the concentration camps, the ghettos, deportation, revolts, liberation, and also images of Anne Frank.

Back in New York, in 1977, Knigin started to create his Holocaust series, so he could show man’s inhumanity to man, and to also show the survival of the human spirit.

 When he was finally introduced to a newly released computer program called Photoshop, he started creating this series on the screen. He created over 500 images in his Holocaust series that eventually led to exhibits at the Jewish Community Center in East Hills, Long Island, in 2001 and also to an exhibit at the Anne Frank Museum in Manhattan, in 2007.

 Knigin was also one of a select group of artists chosen by NASA to capture the space shuttle take-offs, with his drawings, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. He studied printmaking at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he graduated and went on to teach printmaking and lithographs for over 40 years, commuting from his East Hampton studio.

He has exhibited his work at galleries throughout the Hamptons, New York City, Las Vegas, and most recently, in Budapest, Hungary.

Michael Knigin is survived by his wife, artist Joan Kraisky, of East Hampton.

A graveside funeral service was held at Shaarey Pardes Accabonac Grove Cemetary in East Hampton on Friday.