Herman Menzel
1904–

Introduction

Herman Erwin Menzel (1904–1988) was a Modernist American painter.

He was the son of a German Lutheran Pastor and grew up in Chicago, where he attended the Chicago Academy of Design and the National Academy of Art. He married Willa Hamm, a commercial artist, in 1933, with whom he shared a Chicago studio and had a son, Sewall.

Menzel exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago between 1927 and 1939 but became progressively deaf and gradually withdrew from the Chicago art scene, moving in 1933 to live with his wife at her family home in Winnetka. There he painted alone while his wife commuted to work in Chicago. In the late 1930s he bought an island in Rainy Lake on the Minnesota-Ontario border, where he built a cabin, fished and painted. His work from this period became more representational, emphasising the insignificance of human figures in a wild landscape.

Wikidata identifier

Q21809605

View the full Wikipedia entry

Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Accessed October 27, 2024.

Country of birth

United States

Roles

Artist, painter

ULAN identifier

500346227

Names

Herman Menzel

View the full Getty record

Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed October 27, 2024.


On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

On the Hour projects can contain motion and sound. To respect your accessibility settings autoplay is disabled.