Emerson Woelffer

From 1974 and 1992 he taught at The Otis Art Institute (now called Otis College of Art and Design) in Los Angeles, serving as Chair of the Painting Department from 1974 to 1978. In 1991 he received an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. He felt such a strong attachment to Otis that he left his estate to the college in the form of an endowment, to set up a scholarship fund to benefit future artists.

In 1959 he and his wife Dina moved to Los Angeles, California where they settled down in the Mount Washington neighborhood. From 1959 to 1973 he taught at the Chouinard Art Institute (now known as California Institute of the Arts) in Valencia, California.

In 1945 he married Dina Anderson, a photographer. Woelffer’s wife, Dina, died in 1990 and he married Marilu Lopez in 1996.

In 1938 he joined the WPA Arts Program. After serving in the US Air Force, from 1942 until 1949, he taught at Art Institute of Chicago. At the request of Buckminster Fuller, in 1949 he taught at Black Mountain College. In 1954 he taught at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.

Emerson Seville Woelffer (July 27, 1914 – February 2, 2003) was an American artist and arts educator. He was known as a prominent abstract expressionist artist and painter and taught art at some of the most prestigious colleges and universities. Woelffer was one of the important people in bringing modernism to Los Angeles, when he taught at Chouinard Art Institute.

Woelffer was born July 27, 1914 in Chicago, Illinois. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago between 1935 and 1937, with László Moholy-Nagy.