Emill Holzhauer, The Destin Bridge, casein 21 1/2 by 16 1/2 inches. Signed lower left.
After art studies in Germany and in New York City with Robert Henri, Emil Holzhauer’s work began to reach a national audience in periodicals such as Fortune Magazine. In 1945 Holzhauer was professor of art at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. Holzhauer’s exhibit at the Clearwater Art Museum was reviewed in the St. Petersburg Times, April 22, 1945, by Ralph Huntington McKelvey, “The present collection…is made up of paintings that strike the observer as something new in the watercolor field. There is none of the traditional anemic quality that one associates with watercolor painting. They tell their story with terrific impact and the story is a robust and virile one, a narrative of the sorry back streets and industrial districts of Savannah, Macon, Asheville, and other southern points. It is a narrative of grime and poverty. Except for the relief of an occasional landscape, a note of depression rings through the whole collection. Masterly drawing, however, goes a long way to modify one’s distaste for the predominating subject matter, so fraught with evidences of underprivileged living.” Later he taught art at the Ashville School for Boys, the Norton Gallery Art School in West Palm Beach, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Holzhauer retired to Niceville, Florida. He taught art at the Pensacola Art Center from 1955 to 1961. The Center presented one man exhibits of his work in 1955 and 1958. His work, Brooklyn Bridge, completed in 1954, was the first accessioned painting in the Pensacola Museum of Art’s permanent collection. In the 1990’s Okaloosa-Walton College received a gift of more than 350 of Emil Holzhauer’s works.
Education: In Germany; New York City with Robert Henri, Homer Boss. Membership: Pensacola Art Association; Society of The Four Arts. Exhibits: International Watercolor Exhibition, Chicago, 1930, Logan Medal and purchase prize; Society of The Four Arts, 7th annual members show, January 1945; Clearwater Art Museum, April 1945, thirty-two watercolors; Third Southeastern Annual, High Museum, Atlanta, October 1948, 2nd purchase prize for an oil, Fish Beach; Florida State Fair, Tampa, 1958, Alcoa Plant, also exhibited in Men & Steel, Birmingham, Alabama, in collection, Tampa Chamber of Commerce; Florida State Fair, 1958, Taxco; 1960, Marion 22 and Others; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; Fifth Annual Painting of the Year exhibit, Atlanta, April-May 1959; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Denver; Art Association of Los Angeles; Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New York; Albany Institute of History and Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Syracuse, New York; Dudley Peter Allen Memorial Museum, Oberlin, Ohio; Newark Museum, New Jersey; University of Georgia; The High Museum, Atlanta; Pensacola Art Center.
