Biography
Stella Emma Harlos was born in Milwaukee, WI in 1901. Information on her life is available online only in fragmentary form, so the details given below are somewhat speculative. Harlos studied art in Milwaukee with several teachers, including Gustave Moeller, Gerrit Sinclair and William Bishop Owen, Jr. (Owen is listed in one reference as "W. Owens, Jr.," but this probably refers to the very interesting modernist painter William Bishop Owen, Jr.).
She spent time in Southern California, teaching at the Francis Parker School in San Diego in 1923-1924 and working with the pioneering modernist designer Kem Weber in Los Angeles. (Here, again, the online record is confusing, naming a "Kenneth Weber" in Hollywood, which is where Kem Weber set up his studio of industrial design.) Harlos also spent time in Mexico, perhaps taking students from the Francis Parker School, as was their custom. She also painted in Europe, although it's not clear when that trip occurred.
Harlos was back in Wisconsin in the mid 1920s. In 1924 her work won a prize at the Milwaukee Art Institute. She exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago the same year and received an honorable mention for a group of small sculpted figures at the 11th Annual Exhibition of the Wisconsin Painters and Sculptors' Association.
From 1926-1937 Harlos taught at the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, also teaching at Milwaukee-Downer College in 1930. In her first teaching position she founded Layton's ceramics program. She was on the board of the Wisconsin Artists Federation in 1937, along with other prominent Wisconsin artists of the era. In 1942 she completed a Post Office mural "Land of Wood and Lakes" for Hayward, WI. She exhibited with other Milwaukee artists in 1943-1944.
By 1950 Harlos was a department head at the Layton School of Art, a position in which she remained for a number of years. She continued teaching into the 1960s. Her work included painting, ceramics, weaving and printmaking. A curious sideline of Harlos's was her involvement with cat shows. She judged shows in San Francisco (1964) and San Rafael (1967). And, after her death in Mequon, WI in 1978, Cat Magazine published a tribute to her.
Critical Analysis
Like many Wisconsin painters of her era, Harlos focused on scenes of rural Wisconsin. Her Hayward, WI mural, "The Land of Woods and Lakes," depicts a wooded lakeshore with fishermen and boat on the left, a bountiful catch in the center, and a couple walking off with a much smaller string of fish to the right. The hues of the painting are gentle, and the whole scene is very harmonious.
Her "Mexican Market," painted a decade earlier, shares many features with the mural. The palette is similar and the scene is a placid one. In both paintings the human subjects are nearly featureless.
The painting "Meadows" (1978) was completed in the last year of Harlos's life. The palette is much brighter than in her earlier work. And the vegetation is rendered with such precision as to create an almost surrealistic atmosphere. The placid lakes and woods of 1942 have been transformed: they are still lakes and woods, but not the ones they once were. And, nearly hidden in the undergrowth, a cat is crouching. But, unlike the human forms in Harlos's early work, this animal has a carefully rendered and quite expressive face.
Murals
- Hayward, Wisconsin - Post Office: The Land of Woods and Lakes
References
- Biography of Stella M. Harlos (1901-1978) (Artprice).
- PAINTINGS IN OIL AND WATERCOLOR BY A GROUP OF MILWAUKEE ARTISTS (The Renaissance Society). Announcement for an exhbition from November 7 - December 4, 1943.
- Stella Emma Harlos (David Barnett Gallery).
- Stella Emma Harlos (1901-1978) (Museum of Wisconsin Art).
- Stella Harlos (Gallery of Wisconsin Art).