Elise Emelia Hoelzel

Elise Hoelzel was born in 1897 in Kansas City, Missouri. She graduated from Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with C.A. Wilimovsky. In 1925, she won the William Emlen Cresson Memorial Traveling Scholarship for $1,000 to study and travel in Paris. She was also a recipient of the Toppan Prize. After her return from Europe, she returned to Kansas City to study at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Hoelzel displayed her works in many exhibitions, including the Midwestern Artists' Exhibition at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1921, 1922, and from 1925 to 1935. At the 1922 exhibition, her painting The Scotchman was purchased by the Art Department of the University of Oklahoma. In 1934, she won a Gold Medal at the Midwestern Artists’ Exhibition for a lithograph titled Elevated.

Hoelzel was listed in Who’s Who in the West and won many awards for her paintings. She was a member of the National League of Pen Women and a charter member of the Kansas City Society of Artists. In 1954, Hoelzel moved to LaJolla, California, and had an exhibition there in 1962. Hoelzel died in Carlsbad, California, in 1976.