Harold Zisla

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Harold Zisla
Born(1925-06-28)June 28, 1925
Sagamore of the Wabash
(1985)

Harold Zisla (June 28, 1925 – March 18, 2016) was an American

abstract expressionist painter and art educator. In 1968 he became the founding chair of the Fine Arts Department at Indiana University South Bend
, where he taught until his retirement in 1989.

Early life

Zisla was born in Cleveland, Ohio. During his youth he took art classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1932-1937), and he studied with painter Paul B. Travis at Council Educational Alliance (1938–40). In 1940 he won a scholarship to Young Artist Classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where he took classes with Milton S. Fox, a painter and art historian who later served as editor-in-chief and vice president of Harry N. Abrams Inc., an art book publisher.[1]

Zisla earned his high school diploma from East Technical High School in Cleveland in 1943. Following high school, he served in the United States Navy until 1946. He graduated from the Cleveland School of Art with a diploma in painting in 1950. The same year, he received his B.S. in art education at Western Reserve University. The following year he earned his M.S. in art education. He moved to South Bend, Indiana, in 1952, where he worked first as an industrial designer at Uniroyal.[1]

Career

He directed the South Bend Art Center (now the South Bend Museum of Art) from 1957 to 1966, prior to accepting the professorship at what was then called the South Bend-Mishawaka Campus of Indiana University. Four-year degree programs had just been authorized in 1965, and Zisla had the responsibility of hiring new faculty.[2]

Zisla was long active in service to community arts in the Michiana region. Following his tenure as executive director, he served on the South Bend Art Center board of trustees. He also served on the acquisitions committee of Purdue University, the Advisory Board of the Gallery at Saint Mary’s College, and the Mayor’s Committee to Build a Cultural Complex.[3]

Zisla said about painting that it "should be, more than anything else, a liberation into the spirit of the artist, and to have presence, impact, dynamism, freedom from the trite, the contrived, the boringly dead." Paintings, he said, "must be alive.”[1]

Harold Zisla married Doreen on August 13, 1946. They have two children, Paul Zisla and Beverly Welber.[2]

The Harold and Doreen Zisla Art Scholarship has been established at Indiana University South Bend to support graduate and undergraduate students whose work displays an interest in experimental art.[4]

Selected solo exhibits

  • 1965 Indiana University South Bend (IUSB)
  • 1968 South Bend Museum of Art (SBMA)
  • 1969 Niles Art Center, Niles, Michigan
  • 1979 In Celebration, SBMA
  • 1980 Retrospective Images: Icons and Indices, Saint Anselm College, Manchester, New Hampshire
  • 1981 Faces, Figures, Flowers: An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings, IUSB
  • 1982 Harold Zisla: Recent Works, Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, Indiana
  • 1985 Accumulations: Harold Zisla Retrospective, SBMA
  • 1990 Either/Or: New Works, SBMA
  • 1991 Simplicity Complexity = Complexity Simplicity, IUSB
  • 1995 Paintings and Drawings, Lakeside Gallery, Lakeside, Michigan
  • 1996 Harold Zisla: Recent Paintings, SBMA
  • 1998 Portraits, etc., IUSB
  • 2000 Newest Works: Summations, SBMA
  • 2005 Celebration: Harold Zisla, Blue Gallery, Three Oaks, Michigan
  • 2008 Fertile Densities, IUSB
  • 2009 Zisla: Paintings and Works on Paper, New Galleries, South Bend
  • 2013 Gestural Images Deepened, Buchanan Art Center, Buchanan, Michigan

Selected group exhibitions

Books

  • Provocative Lines: Drawings by Harold Zisla (2020)
  • Fine Arts of the South Bend Region, 1840-2000, Walter R. Collins, editor (Wolfson Press 2014)

Awards

References

  1. ^ a b c "Harold Zisla". Retrieved September 23, 2018.
  2. ^ a b "South Bend Artist Harold Zisla Dies at 90". South Bend Tribune. 2016. Retrieved March 24, 2016.
  3. ^ "Hall of Fame". South Bend Alumni Association. Retrieved February 15, 2020.
  4. ^ "Zisla Art Scholarship". Indiana University. Retrieved February 15, 2020.

External links