Walter Vladimir Rousseff

The Gallery seeks a Photo of Vladimir Rousseff as well as early paintings. Contact: info@GalleryofWisconsinArt.com

Born:  1890 - Silistria, Bulgaria 

Died:   1979 - Boston, MA

Vladimir Walter Rousseff was born in Bulgaria in 1890 and spent his childhood making art and excelling in geography and history. He roamed the country, fished, read poetry, and later described his parents’ disappointment “for they expected mathematics, bookkeeping, commercial transactions, etc. He described himself as an “obstreperous” child, who once tried to use oil paints stolen from his uncle.

His father gave him 1,000 francs at age 15 to come to America, where he struggled as a “dishwasher, waiter, carpenter, store clerk, lawyer’s investigator, restaurant manager, peddler, factory hand, cigar store clerk, soda fountain clerk, guard and what not. Such were the steps by which I climbed to the Art Institute Chicago.” He saved $60 to enroll at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) some time after 1916, and was happy at school, walking home every evening “to save carfare for charcoal.”

He studied with Albert H. Krehbiel and Randall Davey, and recalled how, “There I found things which we did not have in our native land, at least I did not see them there. The attraction was stronger than magnet and I climbed, slowly, patiently, carefully.” He attended the Art Students League in 1919 or 1920, where he met Minnie Hansen at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1922. They married the same year, but Minnie met unfortunate tragedy in 1935, when she died in childbirth.

Rousseff retreated to Fish Creek, WI where during this time he painted WPA murals in post-offices in Iron Mountain, MI (1938), Kaukauna, WI (1938) and Edgerton, WI (1941). Rousseff was a summer instructor for many years at Fish Creek Artists’ Colony, Fish Creek, Wis. He was a charter trustee of the Peninsula Arts Association and a life member of the Grand Central Galleries in New York. He had a painting in each of the galleries’ yearbooks since 1947. His murals appear in many schools and post offices in the Midwest and he has exhibited paintings in the leading museums of this country and abroad.

Rousseff painted murals for the Works Progress Administration in post offices in Kaukauna, Wisconsin (A. Grignon Trading with the Indians, 1938), Edgerton, Wisconsin (Tobacco Harvest, 1941), and in Michigan. While he lived in Chicago, he also maintained a studio in Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He completed five western-themed murals for the Iron Mountain post office, 1935–36. His oil painting, Fish Camp, fits well within this western territory subject, but presents the campers—both men and women—as if they were bathers in a Cézanne painting, with faceted shapes of the landscape, angular composition, and muted earth tones. The bucolic Wisconsin scene of casual social interaction and leisure in an outdoor setting is also reminiscent of the French Impressionist tradition and Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1862-63; Musée d’Orsay, Paris), in particular. Rousseff also included an accordion player, referencing, perhaps, the enjoyment of music outdoors that dates also to Giorgione and the Italian Renaissance.

A WPA artist, Walter Rousseff was a painter who also did murals for Michigan post offices, having earned these commissions in a major competition of the Post Office Department Building in Washington DC. Rousseff was born in Bulgaria, settled in Chicago, and also had a studio in Iron Mountain, a small Michigan town. For the new Iron Mountain, Michigan post office, dedicated in 1935, he completed five murals that are inside the lobby. 

Most of his mural paintings had western themes with titles including Moving West, Washing, Carrying Gold, Watching an Early Train, Stage Coach, Ferry Boat, and Fight with Indians.