Born in 1922 in St. Louis, Missouri Seth was a leading abstract artist exhibiting both in 1941 and 1942. Influenced strongly by the Bauhaus movement, Wissner studied at the School on Design in Chicago (New Bauhaus) as well as with Werner Drewes at Washington University. Upon graduating Washington University Wissner gave up his artistic aspirations and focused on medicine. He served in WWII in Yokohama, Japan shortly after the atomic bomb was dropped. Though he was discouraged from helping the Japanese people, he provided medical assistance to the locals in the midst of the horrific event. He began to paint the people, depicting the faces of those who were contorted and deformed, a visual record of the aftermath of the war. Wissner moved back to St. Louis where he would finish out his life, exhibiting only one more time at the St. Louis Artists Guild in 1952. Wissner died in 2014.
