Harold Zisla

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.

Contents

• Harold zisla on abstraction
• Harold zisla life work 11 min clip
• Selected solo exhibits
• Selected group exhibitions
• Awards
• References

Zisla graduated from the Cleveland School of Art and Western Reserve University. He moved to South Bend, Indiana in 1952, where he worked first as a designer at Uniroyal. 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.

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.”

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