Herman Cohen (1922-90) grew up in Atlantic City, NJ. He attended Villanova University and, after military service in the Pacific in World War II, Temple University's Tyler School of Art.
Throughout his career as an art educator Cohen worked privately on his own work, created predominantly for his own satisfaction and rarely exhibited in public. Between the mid 1960s and the mid 1980s he focused mainly on the optical effect of linear design, creating intricately worked ink drawings in black and white that are striking both for the strength and beauty of their design, and for the fact that they were created solely by hand.