Harold Zisla (June 28, 1925 – March 18, 2016) was an American abstract expressionist painter and art educator.
In 1968 he became the founding chair of the Fine Arts Department at Indiana University South Bend, where he taught until his retirement in 1989.
Four-year degree programs had just been authorized in 1965, and Zisla had the responsibility of hiring new faculty.
Following his tenure as executive director, he served on the South Bend Art Center board of trustees.
[3] Zisla said about painting that it "should be, more than anything else, a liberation into the spirit of the artist, and to have presence, impact, dynamism, freedom from the trite, the contrived, the boringly dead."