Meet the Artist

Alonzo Hauser in his Studio Alonzo Hauser (1909-1988)

Alonzo Hauser was born in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, January 1909. A prolific sculptor and artist, his work can be seen in the collection of the Walker Art Museum, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, the Minnesota Historical Society, the Wustum Museum in Racine, Wisconsin, and in many galleries and private collections throughout the country. He founded the Art Department at Macalester College in 1945 and taught at the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, Carleton College in Minnesota, and the University of Minnesota School of Architecture.

A high school dropout, Hauser later studied art at the Wisconsin State College of LaCrosse, UW-Madison, the former Layton School of Art in Milwaukee and elsewhere. He traveled to New York during the Depression and lived a bohemian lifestyle, including an adventurous episode working as a carnival barker for stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.

He and his wife Nancy raised their two boys and a daughter and lived over twenty years on a farm/studio in Eagen, Minnesota before relocating to Prescott, Wisconsin. Later in life Hauser lived briefly in New Mexico, eventually returning to Minnesota.

Hauser was described by the Milwaukee News as “…the only one-man WPA project in Wisconsin, possibly the United States.” He applied as a WPA artist to complete the Greendale flagpole sculpture. He would talk to the school children about art while he worked on it when a Greendale teacher would take her class to watch him work during the hot summer of 1938.

Affectionately known as “Lonnie” the Wisconsin native died in Minneapolis at the age of 79 in November 1988, the 50^th anniversary year of the Village of Greendale. His family has established a website (AlonzoHauser.com) to carry on his legacy.