Jan Gelb

Jeanette "Jan" Gelb was born in 1906 in New York, NY. Gelb resided in Manhattan with the rest of her 4 younger siblings; however, soon relocated to West Haven, Connecticut. Jan Gelb later attended Yale University's School of Art, and graduated in 1927.

Following her graduation from the School of Art at Yale University, Gelb relocated back to her roots in New York to pursue studying arts at the Art Students League. Jan Gelb was an educator, as she helped support herself financially by educating primary schoolers.

Despite her knowledge from painting and life class, she took on a concentration in etching, alongside other artists such as Eugene Fitsch and George Picken.

Gelb worked at Atelier 17, a printmaking studio, in the 1940s. She created many etchings there with an etching press alongside many other women artists at the studio. Printmaking was a collaborative project at times, and influence between printmakers there was evident. Louise Nevelson, one of the women artists at Atelier 17 would use copious amounts of black ink in order to create her prints. Gelb had expressed her opinions on her strategy, stating that Nevelson's prints were "so excessively full of ink that there were just certain areas of the plate that you could really understand," (Weyl 3).

Following her time at Atelier, Gelb and her husband, Boris Margo, decided to maintain a beach shack on the dunes of Provincetown, MA. This location became her favorite place, and one of the biggest inspirations in her later works.