Malcolm Feinstein

1922 - 2014

HOLYOKE - Malcolm Feinstein died at Loomis House in Holyoke on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2014.
Born on July 12, 1922, in Middletown, Connecticut, he was the third and youngest son of Sadie and Jacob Feinstein who had immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe in the early 1900s. He grew up in the tiny town of Chester, Connecticut, where his father and mother ran the village general store which sold everything from shoes to safety pins.
Mal's talents in art and music were recognized at an early age. During his grade-school years, he painted murals on many of the school's walls and received violin lessons from Reuben Segel, a noted violinist and professor at the Hartt School of Music.
Mal began his studies of commercial art at Pratt Institute, but his course work was cut short by World War II. He was inducted into the Army Air Force and served, during the war, as a photo-topographer in India and Burma. After the war, Malcolm used the GI Bill to complete his studies at Pratt in 1947 and, during the next two years, worked as a commercial artist with a specialty in the area of lettering.
Then, eager to try his own hand at painting, Malcolm traveled to France where he enrolled at the Ecoles d'Art Americaines, Palais de Fountainebleau. Upon his return to the U.S., he met Estelle Fisher whom he married in 1949. Three weeks after their wedding, the two moved to Paris where Malcolm studied painting with Edouard Goerg at the Academic de la Grande Chaumier in Montparnasse, attended classes with Leger, exhibited paintings at the American Library in Paris, and set up his portable easel to paint along the streets of Paris and rural France.
In 1951, they returned to the U.S. and eventually settled in Stamford, Connecticut, where they raised three children. From 1959 until 1982, Malcolm pursued a career as a graphic designer and lettering artist with his college roommate, Irv Koons, at Irv Koons Associates in New York City. The studio was named the "Package Design Studio of the Year" by the Package Design Council of New York in 1981.
By age 60, Malcolm retired in order to paint full time in the studio he had built at his Stamford home. After Estelle died in 2002, he relocated close to his daughter's home in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where he continued to paint, creating a total of more than 300 paintings in his lifetime.
Malcolm is survived by one brother, Arthur Feinstein and his wife Rhoda Feinstein; one son, Daniel Feinstein and his wife Rose Ann Wasserman; two daughters, Susan Barry and Deborah Feinstein and their husbands Dan Barry and Alan Copsey; and four grandchildren.
His warmth and imagination will be greatly missed.
Funeral services will be private.
In lieu of flowers, please make contributions to "Mount Holyoke College for the Malcolm Feinstein Music Fund" at Advancement Office, Mount Holyoke College, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA. 01075.
Obituary and memorial register at www.douglassfuneral.com.