Raphael Gleitsmann

Place: Akron

Born: 1910

Death: 1995

Biography:

Raphael Gleitsmann was a self-taught American artist born in 1910. He spent most of his life in Akron, Ohio. Gleitsmann's early works were idealized presentations of life in Middle America during the Great Depression in the realistic style. He served as a combat engineer in World War II from 1943-1945 and was wounded at the Rhine River, receiving the Purple Heart. His experiences abroad affected his art, leading him to create post-Apocalyptic imagery such as ruins and cemeteries. Gleitsmann received national recognition for these works when he won first prize in a 1948 Carnegie Institute exhibition of international contemporary painting. He may have ended his career as an artist around 1954 due to the horrors he witnessed during the war.