Michael Zieve

Michael Zieve was born in Highland Park, IL. 1954. After graduating high school, he attended Rhode Island School of Design and later studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he earned a Batchelor of Fine Arts Degree in 1977. He began showing his work through Nancy Lurie Gallery in Chicago in 1980. This work was abstracted figuration influenced by Chicago imagists and German expressionism. In 1981 he was part of a group show of five Chicago area artists at the Center d'Art Contemporain in Geneva Switzerland. Traveling to Geneva for the show and touring European art capitals had a major impact on his development as an artist. His ensuing work over the next eight years gradually took on a darker tone based on an allegorical response to the inner city where he lived and also influenced by the social realism of earlier Ashcan School artists. Michael continued to show his work with Phyllis Kind Gallery in Chicago and New York into 1989. In the same year he established his own decorative painting studio in Chicago. (visit ZieveStudios.com)

In 1993, Michael relocated from Chicago to Northwest Indiana where he began a new direction in his art. Inspired by the nature preserve where he lives in Laporte, IN., he began a period of investigating new media, new subjects and genres, concurrent with his work as a muralist and decorative painter. In 1998 he executed large scale murals for the U.S. Post office in Rolling Prairie, IN. Michael spent periods of time in northern California in 2000 and 2001 out of which came a series of pastel landscapes. A deep interest in eastern spirituality and art as healing modality led Michael to begin teaching intuitive painting workshops in 2004. As he continues to grow and experiment with new and familiar themes, his recent work has come full circle to an earlier interest in gesture and abstraction. His studio is in Three Oaks, MI. where he creates his own art, and commissioned artworks.