In 1948 Lanyon earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she had met her future husband, the artist Roland Ginzel. Together they attended graduate school at the University of Iowa, where she learned to attack the copper plate without preliminary drawing, bringing out the inherent physicality of her tools and gestures. Lanyon was known for her keen observational skills; though she never owned one of the birds, she once recalled a childhood memory of her neighbor’s parrot that used to squawk annoyingly into the courtyard of her apartment building.
