Carl Holty

Carl Holty
Carl Holty with one of his paintings, ca. 1950, unidentified photographer. Carl Holty papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
Born	Carl Robert Holty (1900-06-21)June 21, 1900 Freiburg, Germany
Died	March 22, 1973(1973-03-22) (aged 72) New York, New York, United States
Known for	Painting
Movement	Abstract
Awards	2010 Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award

Carl Robert Holty (1900–1973) was a German-born American abstract painter. Raised in Wisconsin, he was the first major abstract painter to gain notoriety from the state.Harold Rosenberg described Holty as "a figure of our art history," known for his use of color, shape and form.

Carl Holty was born in 1900 in Freiburg, Germany. His parents, Americans, lived in Freiburg while his father, a doctor, studied specialty medicine since 1899. His father was German, gaining citizenship in the United States in 1906. Shortly after his birth the family moved back to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where they lived in the German district with his grandparents. The Holty family then moved to the countryside near Green Bay where his father practiced medicine, before returning to Milwaukee around 1906. Holty's grandfather introduced him to art by taking him to visit local art galleries. Around the age of twelve, Holty began taking lessons with a local German painter. As a teenager he started drawing cartoons and became interested in poster art. He attended Milwaukee University School, graduating high school within two and a half years. In 1919 he went to Marquette University, then joining the Reserve Officers' Training Corps during World War I, with the program ending within the same year. Back in college, he experimented with medicine only to tell his father on a visit home that he wanted to attend art school. That summer he enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago, eventually attending classes at the Parsons School of Design. He returned to Milwaukee in 1923 and opened a portrait painting studio.