Schomer Lichtner never would have painted cows in order to “brand” himself as a Wisconsin artist. His subjects came about organically, not through any business scheme. In her profusely illustrated account, In the Moment: The Life and Art of Schomer Lichtner (Museum of Wisconsin Art), Susan J. Montgomery situates the beloved Milwaukee printmaker and painter in the rolling Wisconsin countryside that inspired him. Like his friend and mentor Frank Lloyd Wright, Lichtner's work was almost unimaginable without reference to the landscape around him.
Lichtner was also almost inconceivable without his wife and fellow artist, the subject of Montgomery's companion book, In Celebration: The Life and Art of Ruth Grotenrath. Unlike the stormy art marriages that make such good copy in Hollywood, their partnership was supportive and complementary. As the author makes plain, the Museum of Wisconsin Art's current exhibition, “The Yin and the Yang: Schomer Lichtner and Ruth Grotenrath, A Retrospective,” is well titled—not only for the couple's relationship, but also for their appreciation of the art and thought of the Far East, including the flat color planes of Japan and the calm harmony of Zen Buddhism.
During his lifetime, Lichtner's art traveled from darkness into light, from the Ash Can School of his youth to the sunny uplands of maturity. He began with the social realism of urban settings, moved into allegorical representations of the heartland for his New Deal murals and finally into the more distinctive style, with its cows and flowers, by which he is remembered. Lichtner's mature work was never simple realism, but could shade into abstract properties of color and geometry. The whimsy of a ballerina perched like a bouquet on a bovine head suggests Chagall—if the great Russian painter had been born in Wisconsin.
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Lichtner is fondly remembered as an instructor at UW-Milwaukee and other schools, where he nurtured the unique talents of students instead of forcing them into a mold. Perhaps the greatest surprise in Montgomery's biography is Lichtner's dislike of teaching. The kindly, considerate man devoted himself to being exemplary in a profession that—to his consternation—took him away from his first love, the fashioning of his perceptions into the tangible form of art.
