Harry S. Mintz (September 27, 1904 – September 15, 2002) was a Polish-American painter active in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

and

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

Biography

Mintz was born in Ostrowiec,

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

and his documented year of birth varies as 1904, 1907 and 1909. He graduated from the

Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw ( pl, Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie) is a public university of visual arts and applied arts located in the Polish capital. The Academy traces its history back to the Department of Arts founded at the Warsaw U ...

in 1927 with a

Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admini ...

degree. After a fellowship in Brazil, he immigrated to the United States in 1934, where he spent the majority of his professional years painting in the Chicago and Los Angeles areas. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he had lost his mother, father, and sisters in the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

. He was a visiting professor at

Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...

in 1954–1955 and professor of painting at the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and ...

(SAIC) from 1956–1969 before he retiring from teaching to dedicate his time exclusively to painting. Mintz also taught at many Chicago area arts institutions, including the Evanston Art Center and the North Shore Art League. Mintz was a registered Illinois artist for the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

Federal Art Project The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administrati ...

during the 1930s. His artwork, realistic in the beginning, grew more and more abstract as his career progressed, reflecting the uncertainties of life between the two world wars. His Self-Portrait, painted in 1931, shows the artist in his early twenties, wearing a shirt and tie under his artist smock, and posed against a background of books as if to emphasize the artist as both a worker and an educated, thinking man. Mintz was an active member in Chicago’s Jewish community. He sought out surviving members of his extended family during the postwar years, advertising in European newspapers and perusing thousands of telephone book pages. In 1987, he gathered the surviving members of the Mintz family for a family reunion in Chicago. He died in his home in Lake View neighborhood of Chicago on September 15, 2002. His work is included in public museum collections including the

Princeton University Art Museum The Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) is the Princeton University gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. With a collecting history that began in 1755, the museum was formally established in 1882, and now houses over 113,000 works o ...

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

, among others.

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mintz, Harry 1904 births 2002 deaths 20th-century Polish painters 20th-century Polish male artists 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw alumni Polish male painters School of the Art Institute of Chicago faculty Washington University in St. Louis faculty Polish emigrants to the United States Federal Art Project artists Holocaust survivors