Rudolph Weisenborn on "Lost Chicago"

WTTW just ran their episode on Lost Chicago Murals
including one at Nettelhorst Elementary School

by the Palette and Chisel's
most famous modernist
Rudolph Weisenborn

Weisenborn was one of the P&C's
three notorious modernists
all of whom quit when their idea of a weak painting
was juried into a Palette and Chisel show.
(imagine that! P&C members actually concerned about what
the P&C Gallery is exhibiting)



"On the left, an abstracted portrait of a sophisticated urban dweller is followed by forms of modern transportation such as small biplanes at Chicago Municipal Airport (Midway) and boats on Lake Michigan. The right half of the composition shows the stockyards on Chicago’s South Side and a construction worker holding an anvil and working on a steel frame structure."



Defiantly expressionistic,
Weisenborn was the prototype
for young Chicago artists
ever since.

Had he been born 50 years later,
he might have had a nice, comfy career
as a university art professor.

But back in his day,
he had to scrape by,
teaching small classes in his studio.