22 Facts About Amund Dietzel

Amund Dietzel was an early American tattoo artist who tattooed tens of thousands of people in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, between 1913 and 1967.

Amund Dietzel developed a substantial amount of flash art, influenced many other tattoo artists, and helped to define the American traditional tattoo style.

Amund Dietzel was known as the "Master of Milwaukee" and "Master in Milwaukee".

Amund Dietzel learned to tattoo as a young Norwegian sailor, but after a shipwreck in Canada, he decided to immigrate to the United States.

Amund Dietzel became a traveling performer as a tattooed man, then settled in Milwaukee as a professional tattoo artist.

Scandinavia had a maritime tattooing tradition, and Amund Dietzel soon received his first tattoo.

In July 1907, when Amund Dietzel was 16, his ship wrecked near Quebec, and he decided to work in the lumber yards there rather than return to sea.

Amund Dietzel wanted to be a fine-art painter, but he could not afford to continue studying art at Yale, so he became a full-time tattoo artist instead.

Amund Dietzel made friends with William Grimshaw, an English immigrant who was a developing tattoo artist.

In 1913, Amund Dietzel arrived in Milwaukee and found that nobody was tattooing there.

Amund Dietzel decided to stay and set up shop in an arcade.

Amund Dietzel's business occupied various downtown locations over the years, and he sometimes shared space with a sign painter.

Amund Dietzel was known to wear formal clothes at work, such as a vest and tie with rolled-up shirtsleeves, and even sleeve garters.

Amund Dietzel said that the Navy was discouraging tattoos of naked women, so he was often asked to add clothes to existing tattoos.

Amund Dietzel became known as the region's leading tattoo artist.

Amund Dietzel painted landscapes and birds, and he took classes at Layton School of Art in Milwaukee.

In 1964, at age 73, Amund Dietzel sold his shop to his friend and collaborator Gib "Tatts" Thomas.

In February 1967, Thomas said that he and Amund Dietzel had "covered more people for exhibition than any two people in the United States", but that few people wanted to become tattooed sideshow performers anymore; most of their recent customers were sailors or businessmen.

Samuel Steward, who had learned from Amund Dietzel and kept some of Amund Dietzel's flash in his shop, trained Don Ed Hardy.

Hardy went on to revive and promote the American traditional tattoo style that Amund Dietzel had worked in.

Reiter started collecting flash art by Amund Dietzel and got in contact with Amund Dietzel's grandsons, who shared boxes of memorabilia and photos with him.

Amund Dietzel wrote two books about Dietzel and worked with the Milwaukee Art Museum to hold an exhibit of Dietzel's art in 2013.