Agnes Weinrich was born in southeast Iowa in 1873, the first generation of a German family born in America. She began her career as an artist in a traditional, realistic style. After graduation from high school, her father took her and her sister to Berlin to live with family members. On her return from Europe, she studied at The Art Institute of Chicago and then became part of a group of modernist artists in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Weinrich, over the course of her career, moved from a traditional to a non-objective style, influenced greatly by European art.

Weinrich lived all her life with her sister, Helen, a musician. Helen's husband, Karl Knaths, also a first generation German-American, was considered the artist in the family. In contrast to Weinrich, Knaths work was extensively collected and he was financially successful. According to Knaths, it was Weinrich who introduced him to modernism. But Weinrich worked very much in Knaths' shadow. She lived most  of her life in Provincetown and died there in 1946.

Source: News, November December 1997.