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On View in West Bend

Art Gebhardt

A Painter’s Painter

Past Exhibition

November 23–February 23

MOWA | West Bend

About the Exhibition

Special thanks to the Gebhardt Family

Opening Party | November 23

2:00–4:00

This exhibition celebrates the life and work of Arthur “Art” Gebhardt, businessman, philanthropist, and artist. Gebhardt made his living from the family tanning business in Milwaukee, but his true love was painting, a passion that remained with him his entire life.

He graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with a degree in fine arts. His early works show the influence of former teacher Robert Grilley and contemporary Wisconsin artists Fred Berman, Joseph Friebert, and Leon Travanti. As Gebhardt’s work evolved, he also drew inspiration from French Impressionists Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Over more than six decades, Gebhardt produced countless paintings: portraits of friends and family members, interiors of pool halls, circuses with swinging trapeze artists, café scenes, and surreal images of pure imagination.

Family members describe Gebhardt as always having an easel set up in his house ready for visitors who posed regularly as models. Despite his deep commitment to the painter’s practice, he had little interest in selling his work; in fact, he never sold a single painting during his life, preferring instead to give them away to friends or relatives. For Gebhardt, painting was pure joy and he delighted in sharing his art with others as an expression of friendship.

In an effort to give Gebhardt the long overdue recognition he deserves, this exhibition assembles more than a dozen paintings from the homes of family members and friends to honor this painter’s painter.

Image: Acrobats, 2008
Image: Uncle August, 2015