15 Facts About Louis Grell

Louis Frederick Grell was an American figure composition and portrait artist based in the Tree Studio resident artist colony in Chicago, Illinois.

Louis Grell received his formal training in Europe from 1900 through 1915 and later became art professor at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts from 1916 to 1922, and at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1922 to 1934.

Louis Grell exhibited in New York in 1915 and 1916 and in Philadelphia and Washington DC.

Louis Grell was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, to German emigrant meat market owners, and remained until the age of 12, when in May 1900, his parents decided to send him to Hamburg, Germany, to study art.

Louis Grell then began a three-year study of the fundamentals of painting in Altona, Germany.

In May 1907, after Louis Grell had completed his art training in Hamburg, he returned to America to visit family in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

At the age of 19, on a late summer family vacation to Salt Lake City, Utah, Louis Grell took over a failed mural commission depicting the 1847 entry of the Mormons into Emigration Canon.

Louis Grell hired two assistants and took three months to finish the paintings.

Louis Grell was the main art instructor at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts from 1916 to 1922 where one of his students was animator and cartoonist, Walt Disney.

In 1922, Grell was recruited by Director Charles L Hutchison of the Art Institute of Chicago to become art instructor at the famous School of the Art Institute of Chicago and would remain until 1934 when Grell would embark on a solo career as a portrait and mural painter.

Louis Grell exhibited 25 times at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1917 until 1941 winning top honors.

Louis Grell won the coveted Harry Frank prize for figure composition in 1930 with his large painting titled "Destiny" at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Municipal Art League prize for portraiture in 1936 for "Portrait of the Painter, Moessel" at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Louis Grell exhibited heavily throughout Chicago and in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Washington DC.

Louis Grell was primarily a portrait and mural painter, but the Louis Grell Family collection and other known works include a vast array of mural studies, portraits, landscapes and still life paintings.

Louis Grell died of a heart ailment while working on numerous mural projects and easel paintings at Tree Studios in Chicago on November 21,1960.