Roland Ginzel

Roland F. Ginzel, painter, printmaker and teacher, was born in Lincoln, Illinois on May 7, 1921. His art studies were interrupted by WWII as he joined the United States Coast Guard but he retuned to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he earned his B.F.A. He married fellow artist Ellen Lanyon in 1948. Ginzel continued his printmaking studies under Mauricio Lasansky and received his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 1950. His post-graduate studies were at the Slade School of Art in London where he studied further printmaking with John Buckland Wright, and at the Academia de Belle Arti in Rome.

Ginzel returned to Chicago in 1951 and joined the staff of the University of Illinois Chicago where he taught until 1985. In 1953, he co-founded the Graphic Art Workshop, a center for print making and exhibition. His work was included in important exhibitions of Chicago artists and was featured in the First Chicago Invitational in 1962. A retrospective of his work was mounted in 1986 at the University of Illinois Chicago.

His work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Dallas Museum of Art, Illinois State Museum, Joslyn Museum of Art, National Museum of American Art, and the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

In Art in Chicago 1945-1995, Dominic Molon praised Ginzel: "Despite the strong figurative presence in Chicago, 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."