Biography

Schomer Frank Lichtner was still painting in the 101st year of his life. Clearly it was a life filled with a great deal of productive work.

Lichtner was born in Peoria, IL. His artistic abilities were recognized while he was still a student in Washington High School, where he was given a private studio, and where he took college level classes with Gustave Moeller. Moeller was a painter of regional towns and villages and taught at the School of Fine and Applied Arts in Milwaukee.

Lichtner studied at the Milwaukee Art Students League and the Chicago Art Students League before attending the Art Institute of Chicago in 1925. In 1926 he studied at the Art Students League of New York, with a brief trip to New Orleans the following year.

From 1928-1929 Lichtner studied with the art historian Oskar Hagen at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He met Frank Lloyd Wright during this period, which led to visits at Taliesin later in Lichtner's career.

Approriate to the tenor of the times, Lichtner adopted a social realist style in the 1930s. He exhibited in the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh in 1930. In 1932 Lichtner was introduced by Moeller to another of his students, Ruth Grotenrath, who became Lichtner's lifelong partner. The couple married in 1934 and lived initially in a primitive cabin on property in the Kettle Moraine area that was owned by Grotenrath's family. This location, near Holy Hill outside of Milwaukee, was to become their regular summer retreat.

Lichtner and Grotenrath were both employed by the WPA in 1935, and they both completed a number of murals for the government. She had murals commissioned for West Bend, WI, Hart, MI, and Wayzata, MN. He did murals of 5 panels for the Sheboygan, WI Post Office (1939), 3 panels for the Hamtramck, MI Post Office (1940), and 1 panel for the Hodgenville, KY Post Office (1943). He also painted a mural for the Walker Junior High School in Milwaukee.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Lichtner and Grotenrath taught at The Clearing Folk School in Door County, WI. Lichtner taught drawing and design at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee from 1960-1969. During that decade he also taught occasionally at the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, the Wustum Museum of Fine Arts in Racine, and the Milwaukee Art Center.

A 1962 exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Center showcased the work of Lichtner and Grotenrath. The couple heard Alan Watts lecture at Beloit College in 1961, and traveled to Japan in 1965, meeting Watts there briefly. Zen had a strong influence on Grotenrath's work, somewhat less for Lichtner's.

In 1964 Lichtner won a prize at the Art Institute of Chicago and published the first of six books of his artwork (the others being issued in 1969, 1973, 1974, 1979 and 1981). He was part of a 3-man show at the Art Institute in 1969. In 1980 he had two paintings in the Wisconsin Painters and Sculptors show, and he had one painting in the Wisconsin Watercolor exhibit in 1981.

In 2005, at age 100, Lichtner was still living independently and still making art. He received the Wisconsin Visual Artist Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006 and was honored by the Milwaukee Ballet in 2006. He died following a fall in his home in 2006. The Racine Art Museum showcased the work of Lichtner and Grotenrath in 2011.

Critical Analysis

Lichtner began his career with murals of the social realist style. His contributions to this genre provide some of the best examples of United States Post Office art. But, following the Depression Era, other influences began to dominate Lichtner's work. His style evolved to display a puckish sort of humor. And his themes evolved from workers and the landscapes in which they worked to focus on a different element of the rural landscape: cows. Lichtner said he first started looking at cows when he and Ruth were honeymooning at Holy Hill. Their cabin had no plumbing, and they bathed in a nearby stream, soaking up the natural environment in more ways than one.

While there were a half dozen cows in one panel of Lichtner's Sheboygan Post Office mural, those cows were rendered in a completely natural style. His later cow paintings showed the influence of Matisse and Dufy in terms of palette, but had a unique playful style about them.

A second love of Lichtner's was for the ballet, and he was a regular patron of the Milwaukee Ballet. Soon ballerinas began showing up alongside his cow paintings, and at some point he began to paint ballerinas and cows in unlikely juxtapositions, with the dancers atop the cows' backs.

Lichtner was also a craftsman. He built furniture for the house that he and Grotenrath bought in Milwaukee in 1943. and he created sculptures - typically involving some combination of cows and ballerinas. He and Grotenrath were popular figures in Milwaukee, appearing in public events and readily selling their works of art.

Murals

• Hodgenville, Kentucky - Post Office: Hodgen's Mill
• Hamtramck, Michigan - Post Office: City Workers
• Hamtramck, Michigan - Post Office: Farm Family
• Hamtramck, Michigan - Post Office: Products of Industry and Agriculture
• Sheboygan, Wisconsin - Post Office: Agriculture
• Sheboygan, Wisconsin - Post Office: Indian Life
• Sheboygan, Wisconsin - Post Office: Present City
• Sheboygan, Wisconsin - Post Office: The Lake
• Sheboygan, Wisconsin - Post Office: The Pioneer

References

1. Schomer Lichtner (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Art Collection).
2. Schomer Lichtner (Lawrence University Wriston Art Galleries Collections).
3. Schomer Lichtner and Ruth Grotenrath Papers, 1918-2009 (University of Wisconsin Digital Collections).
4. Schomer Lichtner and Ruth Grotenrath: Wisconsin's Artist Couple (Artsy).
5. Schomer Lichtner with Ruth Grotenrath (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Archives).