Elizabeth Olds (December 10, 1896 – March 4, 1991)[1] was an American artist known for her work in developing silkscreen as a fine arts medium.

The pair experimented with the style and themes of the Ashcan school, visiting the Lower East Side of New York to observe the lives of urban immigrants.

In 1932, Olds viewed José Clemente Orozco’s nearly finished murals at Dartmouth College, and was inspired by his expressive use of form and political themes.

[6] Olds’s break from portraiture was fruitful as she developed her style and content, which like Orozco’s murals, used broad, expressive lines and portrayed political themes.

[6] "Sheep Skinners," one of the ten black-and-white lithographs, was exhibited in 1935 in the Weyhe Gallery in New York as one of the “Fifty Best Prints of the Year.”[8] From 1935 until the early 1940s, Olds was a nonrelief employee for the Works Progress Administration-Federal Art Project (WPA-FAP) in the Graphic Arts Division in New York,[9] where she helped younger artists in the silkscreen unit.

[7] Together, they observed the mining and steel industries of New York, and their research lead to Olds's creation of her award-winning print, "Miner Joe.

[12] Carl Zigrosser, who was curator of prints and drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1940 through 1963, wrote from the vantage point of 1941 that: "The first serigraph actually made on the newly organized (WPA) New York Silk Screen Project was The Concert by Olds.

.She is an accomplished graphic artist and has made a considerable number of serigraphs outside the Project, in addition to her long experience in lithography.

"[13] From 1939 until 1941, Olds and Gottlieb opened and ran the independent Silk Screen School for students interested in learning the newest printmaking technologies.

[17] After World War II, Olds redirected her skills and began experimenting with watercolor, collage, and woodblock prints.

[19] In the summers of the 1950s and 1960s, Olds was awarded artist-in-residence positions at the artists’ colonies of Yaddo near Saratoga Springs in New York and McDowell in Peterborough, New Hampshire.