Roland Ginzel

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Roland Ginzel (Born May 7, 1921) is a painter, printmaker and educator who was based for much of his career in Chicago, Illinois.

Life

Ginzel was born and raised in Lincoln, Illinois to prominent architect Roland Ginzel and his wife Mabel Armstrong. After attending Lincoln College he enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago in 19__. With the advent of the Second World War he enrolled in the United States Coast Guard and was stationed at various sites on the Atlantic coast and Sanibel Island, Florida. Upon discharge in 1945 he returned to the Art Institute of Chicago completing his BFA in 1948. That same year he married classmate and fellow artist Ellen Lanyon. Ginzel subsequently competed his MFA at the University of Iowa in 1950 where he worked with Mauricio Lasansky. Postgraduate studies occurred at The Slade School as well as the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, UK while Lanyon was on a Fulbright Fellowship. Ginzel and Lanyon have two children, Andrew born 1954 and Lisa, born 1956. Ginzel was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Rome, Italy for the years 1962-63. Ginzel taught printmaking and seminars at the University of Chicago from 1952 to 1954. Subsequently he taught painting and printmaking at the University of Illinois from 1955 to retiring as Professor Emeritus in 1985. Post-retirement Ginzel has worked and resided in both New York City and the Berkshires in Massachusetts.

Career

Ginzel is considered one of the pioneering abstractionists of Chicago; his art also serves as an early example of an abstract style not traditionally associated with Chicago's art history. [1] Ginzel's unique brand of abstract painting, using patterns of shapes, lines, and colors dispersed about the picture plane, has merited the exhibition of his work at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MOMA in New York as well as showings throughout Europe and Japan. Ginzel has referred to his paintings with phrases like “lyrical formalism” and “soft geometry” suggesting a poetic use of abstract forms and a connection to Surrealism, respectively. Despite the strong figurative presence in Chicago art, Ginzel has maintained an unwavering devotion to abstract painting. His long-term dedication to abstraction makes him one of the most singular and individualistic figures in the spectrum of postwar Chicago art.

Ginzel was involved in creating important arts organizations and exhibitions in Chicago. While attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Ginzel was among the students from SAIC and the Institute of Design (including Leon Golub, Irving Petlin, Robert Nickle, and Ellen Lanyon) who organized Exhibition Momentum in response to the exclusion of students by AIC from their Chicago & Vicinity shows. In 1953 Ginzel founded (with Lanyon and others) the non-profit Graphic Art Workshop, a center for printmaking practice and exhibition. The workshop was damaged by fire in 1955 and closed in 1956. Ginzel was active in Phalanx (1964-1967) as well as PAC (Participating Artists of Chicago} from 1966 to 1969. [2]

During the three decades after Ginzel 's return to Chicago from Europe in 1951, he was included in important shows of Chicago artists, including many of the Exhibition Momentum shows. He was featured in the " First Chicago Invitational" of 1962, sponsored by the Frumkin and Holland galleries; the Phalanx 3 exhibition of 1965; "Exhibition 150" at Barat College in Lake Forest in 1968 (celebrating the sesquicentennial of the State of Illinois); and " Abstract Art in Chicago" at MCA in 1976. Gallery 400 at UIC honored Ginzel's forty years as an artist and an instructor at the university with a retrospective in 1986. Ginzel was part of the group (including Richard Hunt, Miyoko Ito and Seymour Rosofsky) that showed at the short-lived Superior Street Gallery from 1958 to 1961 and was represented by the B.C. Holland Gallery, Dart Gallery and the Roy Boyd Gallery. Selected public collections include The National Gallery of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois State Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

References

[1] Lynne Warren, Editor; Dominic Molon, Author Art in Chicago 1945-1995 Thames and Hudson Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago 1996 ISBN-10: 050023728X ISBN-13: 978-0500237281 p. 59, 66n,74, 78,82n, 254

[2] Art in Chicago: A History from the Fire to Now Maggie Taft (Editor), Robert Cozzolino (Editor) University of Chicago Press 2018 ISBN-10: 022616831X ISBN-13: 978-0226168319 p. 140,143-44, 152, 166, 174

Roland Ginzel

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