William S. Schwartz (February 23, 1896 – February 10, 1977) was an American artist who lived and worked in Chicago. "William Samuel Schwartz was quite a character. His quirky handlebar mustache and voluptuous head of hair matched his quick wit, multilingual tongue, and penchant for opera. Schwartz’s oeuvre included landscapes, portraits, and still lifes. His imagination often penetrated the brush and large, yet controlled, canvases of abstracted driftwood, biomorphic forms, and allegorical narratives became commonplace. Despite his jovial personality, conflicting themes often revealed themselves in his work. Drawing from the fauve spirit and utilizing elements of cubism, constructivism, and surrealism, Schwartz considered himself a “romantic modernist, refusing to bend to the whims of what was in vogue: “No one has told me I must depict this or that I must not venture upon that. I have painted in faith and in freedom—faith that somehow what I have done will reflect the best that is in me—freedom to choose my own themes in my own way.”  As a child in Smorgon, Russia, his parents could only rarely afford to buy him crayons to illustrate his imaginative stories. At the age of eleven, he earned a full scholarship to the Vilna Art School, and around 1914, came to New York City, an experience he later described: “…I was utterly unprepared for my first impression of America. That impression, in one word, was power! The sheer physical bulk of New York engulfed me.”  After a short period in New York, Schwartz moved to Omaha, where he focused on reading and writing English, a task more difficult than he expected, having, he claimed, already mastered Italian, Polish, and Spanish at a young age. He also met his mentor, J. Laurie Wallace, a locally renowned portraitist and teacher at the Kellom School. In the portrait J. Laurie Wallace, the sitter gives an inquisitive leer, suggestive...” afanews.com/articles/item/529-william-s-schwartz-romantic-modernist#.v4tffa441wz undefined

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