Lester O. Schwartz

Faculty Artist

The Department of Art at Ripon College was founded by Lester O. Schwartz, artist-in-residence from 1944 until his retirement in 1977. He was allowed to renovate a fraternity house into a studio and was given free rein to paint, as long as he also taught for four hours each day.

A 1937 graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a student of the Imperial Art School in Tokyo, the Colarossi Academy in Paris and the American Academy in Rome, Schwartz is recognized as one of Wisconsin’s most distinguished artists.

He was born June 29, 1912, in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. He took an interest in creating sculptural designs from scrap metal at his father’s scrap yard.

In his early years, he worked on cartooning and received a full scholarship to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to study commercial art although his passion was fine art. Although he paused his studies in 1933 to return home, he later resumed and studied fine art under the tutelage of Boris Anisfeld.

In 1937, his senior year, he won the Edward L. Ryerson Traveling fellowship and traveled the world by steamship for almost two years creating hundreds of paintings and drawings. This included studying in Paris where he met Pablo Picasso and spent many months on the island of Bali. When he returned from the traveling fellowship in 1939 he exhibited his work in a one man show in the contemporary galleries of the Art Institute of Chicago.

After returning to Wisconsin, he worked for the WPA as a commissioned artist in Illinois and Wisconsin, and served in the U.S. Army at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, where the chaplain assigned him to do paintings for the chapel.

He taught at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Layton Art School in Milwaukee before coming to Ripon as a recognized artist with numerous awards and honors.

Over the course of eight decades, he was a prolific painter, print-maker and sculptor with work exhibited in venues such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum in New York, the Carnegie in Pittsburg, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Salon d’Automne in Paris. His paintings have been included in many one-man and group shows and in public and private collections around the world.

Many of his works are in the permanent collection of the College, and he provided the cover art for the 1990 book “Ripon College a History.”

He married one of his former students, Gloria Greco, Class of 1956, and together they transformed the landscape of their Green Lake farm into a beautiful environment. After his wife’s death in 1986, Schwartz named the farm Gloria Hills. To deal with his grief, he immersed himself into his artwork and transformed his home into an art gallery and transitioned the property into a sculpture garden featuring his large steel sculptures. “Artists are lucky; we can paint, write or compose our way out of a dark place to a place of light,” he said.

Ripon presented him with an honorary degree in 2001. In 2006, Schwartz expressed a great desire to attend his 61st Ripon College Commencement. He fulfilled that wish on May 14 and died two days later at the age of 93.

Relatives who attended Ripon include two of his daughters, Tanya Schwartz-Roeper, Class of 1988, and Gigi Schwartz, Class of 1989; his son-in-law, Randy Roeper, Class of 1988, associate vice president for advancement at Ripon; and his grandson, Jonah Roeper, Class of 1924. His father-in-law, Tony Greco, graduated from Ripon in 1935.