Otto Bielefeld

The Gallery seeks a photograph of Otto Bielefeld, and his artwork. If you can help, contact us: info@GalleryofWisconsinArt.com

BORN: December 12, 1908 - Milwaukee, WI

DIED: June 3, 1982 - Whitefish Bay, WI

Not a great deal is known of Otto Bielefeld. He was born on December 12, 1908 to a first-generation American, Henry Bielefeld from Baltimore and Wisconsin-born Minnie Bielefeld who gave birth to Otto - the youngest of four children - when she was forty.

Otto Bielefeld lived continuously with his mother on 2522 North 12th Street in Milwaukee. He contracted polio around the age of nine. In early adulthood he moved to Whitefish Bay where he live with his sister Minnie. Bielefeld graduated when he was past twenty from North Division High School in Milwaukee in 1929 possibly due to his polio.  Described as "A man of perseverance is Otto; with clever pen he draws a lot".

In 1929 Bielefeld entered the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee and studied there until 1934, winning a scholarship in 1931. A photograph of him in 1933 when he was twenty-five next to his nephew Richard reveals a sturdy and muscular young man (in the upper torso). At the Layton School, Bielefeld followed the strenuous and comprehensive curriculum, including Drawing and Modeling from the Figure, Design and Composition, Still Life, and Lettering, Painting, Advertising Design, Industrial Design, Interior Design, and Survey of Art, Painting, Advertising Design, Analysis of Nature Forms, Etching, and Fashion Illustration. 

One of the instructors of the Layton School, Gerrit V. Sinclair, painted within the Regionalist genre with outdoor scenes of people strolling about, automobiles chugging along country roads -- all manifestations of a pleasant rural or small town existence. Unlike Bielefeld, Sinclair did not try to get at the inner life of the people he showed or get beneath the surface of things. His direction was completely different from Bielefeld's. 

While enrolled at the Layton School, Bielefeld became part of the Federal Government's WPA Program, leaving it in 1935 or 1936.  He produced no murals, but one of his prints, a street scene entitled In the Rain was included in a WPA print exhibition at the Smithsonian. 

Otto died on June 3, 1982 and is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Milwaukee.