The Class of 1945

Robert Leon Knipschild was born in 1927 in Freeport, Illinois, and probably graduated in the Class of 1945.

Bob Knipschild studied at the University of Wisconsin and at Cranbrook Academy of Art where he worked under Zoltan Sepeshy.

In 1950, at the age of twenty-three, his work was selected for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's widely acclaimed exhibition "American Painting Today."

In 1951 Edith Halpert added him to her Downtown Gallery in Manhattan. In 1952, Life magazine ran a story on Halpert's "new discoveries." Knipschild appeared in a photograph with several other young artists. Another Knipschild painting is reproduced with the story.

Since then he has received wide recognition, with many one-man shows and several prizes in important competitive exhibits world-wide.

Knipschild moved to Cincinnati in 1966 to become a professor of art at the University of Cincinnati and later became director of graduate studies in fine arts. He remained at UC until his retirement in 1991.

Knipschild was "a landscape artist, but the landscapes in question are so filtered through his own sensibility that, at first glance, they seem wholly abstract. This isn't so at all. A horizon line, usually in the lower half of the work, is frequent. Uneven terrain is suggested, as well as buildings and sometimes roads. People do not inhabit Knipschild's artistic concepts. He shows where they live and something of what they do to their environments, but the people themselves have taken cover. Deep within each work, under many, many further layers of oil paint, is a base coat of what he calls "British Red," a shade that runs close to -- but isn't quite -- terra cotta. The mostly invisible red covers a linen ground and gives weight and richness to everything above." - Jane Durrell

Robert Knipschild died in 2004.

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