Amund Dietzel, the Illustrated Man

Amund Dietzel was born in Christiana (now Oslo), Norway in 1891. At the age of 14, he left his homeland on a merchant ship. The art and significance of tatoos to the insular world of men at sea had a great effect on the young Norwegian. With home made tools and solid drawing skills he went to work learning the ancient art by practicing on his shipmates. A shipwreck brought an end to his ocean travels and left him on the the shores of North America and he soon developed a close friendship with a British immigrant tatoo artist named William Grimshaw. The two men inked each others bodies from head to toe and hit the carnival circuit. They exhibited themselves, sold photographs of their inked bodies and provided tatoos for curious carnival goers. In 1914, Dietzel arrived in Milwaukee. The city known as “America's Machine Shop” was in full stride and the vitality of this mostly immigrant place was a perfect fit for Dietzel. Two World War’s worth of tatoo hungry sailors from nearby Great Lakes Naval Station brought him both a wealth of customers and worldwide human billboard advertising as the finest tatoo artist in the Great Lakes region. Milwaukee was on it’s way to becoming another fading rust belt city when the Milwaukee Common Council banned tattoo parlors in 1967. Dietzel got in the last word, "…Milwaukee used to be a very nice town." He passed away in 1974, well ahead of better times for a now thriving Tatoo industry and Milwaukee.

Read MilwaukeeTattoo historian and artist Jon Reiter is the Author of These Old Blue Arms: The Life and Work of Amund Dietzel

Tattoo: Flash Art of Amund Dietzel was a 2013 exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum

Dietzel’s signature masked Devil Girl.

Posted 23rd February 2011 by FLA updated in 2019