Edmund D. Lewandowski (1914 - 1998)

As an artist and educator, he has played a leading role in the development of American modernism and was Wisconsin’s most important disciple of this style. Lewandowski said he had an overwhelming desire as an artist to record the beauty of man-made objects. His crisp images of machines, harbors, industrial structures (grain elevators and bridges), rigid geometry and reverence for his subject are a lasting contribution in the field of the Precisionist aspect of modernism.
 
Lewandowski’s achievements were many and diverse. He holds the distinction of working on the largest and smallest works of art in the United States.  The Milwaukee War Memorial Center mosaic that was created by Lewandowski in 1976 contains one and one-half million pieces of glazed tile and measures 18,000 square feet. The smallest work was the design for the Polish millennium commemorative stamp for the U.S. Postal Service which sold over 100 million copies. They also included covers for Fortune Magazine, interiors for luxury liners (S.S. Constitution and Independence), and a commissioned portrait of Pope Pius XI. Around 1950 he created a 16’ mosaic for the entrance of Brooks Memorial Union at Marquette University, symbolizing the Jesuits and Pere Marquette; in 1958 he produced a 10’ by 90’ mural for the Allen Bradley Co. employee cafeteria and in 1978 he completed a 34’ by 34’ biblical mosaic of St. Luke for St. Luke’s Hospital. His talent was included in 163 exhibitions.  The first color presentation to originate from WTMJ-TV studios was an innovative one-half hour series, The Layton Story, presented by Edmund Lewandowski.