Eleanor Antin - Biography

Biography

Born Eleanor Fineman in the Bronx, New York on February 27, 1935 her parents emigrated in the 1930s from Rusch, a tiny town in Poland. Her father, Sol Fineman (1910–2004), was a socialist and atheist who worked in the garment industry in New York. Her mother, Jeanette Efron (1912–1994), a former actress in the Yiddish theater in Poland, was a communist and a creative entrepreneur. She went by the name Jeanette Fineman until she divorced and married the Hungarian poet and artist, Peter Moor, (ne Barna Josef, 1895–1989) and was thereafter known as Jeanette Barna. Eleanor had one sister, Marcia Goodman (1940–2004).

Eleanor attended Music and Art High School in New York as an art major, and City College of New York (CCNY), where she majored in writing and minored in art. From 1954–1956, she studied philosophy at the New School for Social Research and studied acting at the Tamara Daykarhanova School for the Stage. She was registered in Actors Equity and worked as an actress under the stage name Eleanor Barrett. In her last year of college she accepted an acting job with a traveling road company in William Inge’s Bus Stop. During this period, 1955–1958, Antin worked in various projects on the stage, including a stint with Ossie Davis, and also supported herself modeling for painters.

In 1958, Antin returned to CCNY and earned a Bachelors degree in creative writing and art. There she met the writer and critic, David Antin, whom she married in 1961. Their son Blaise was born in 1967 and is named after Blaise Cendrars, the modern French poet, novelist and art critic. In 1968 the family moved from New York to Southern California, where David began teaching at the University of California in San Diego. Eleanor taught at the University of California in Irvine (UCI) from 1974–1975, and was a professor at the University of California in San Diego (UCSD) from 1975–2002.