Born in Dayton, Gleitsmann moved to Akron at an early age when his father, an architectural engineer and amateur painter, secured a job in the area. After graduating from high school, he took private drawing lessons for one year with Katherine Calvin. Lacking the funds for tuition, he accepted the invitation of Paul Travis to attend classes informally at the Cleveland School of Art and became friends with other artists there. Primarily a landscape painter, he first exhibited in the annual of the Butler Institute of Art in Youngstown (1936) and had his first solo show at the Massillon (Ohio) Museum (1939). He also exhibited at the New York World’s Fair that year. The Little Gallery of Cleveland College organized his second solo exhibition (1940). In 1943 he began an association with Macbeth Galleries in New York, where he was featured in solo exhibitions (1940s–50s). He exhibited in the annuals of the Art Institute of Chicago (1937–49), Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia (1944 52), and Carnegie Institute of Art in Pittsburgh (1943–48). In 1944–45 he served in the U.S. Army as a combat engineer in Europe, an experience that profoundly affected his subsequent subject matter. Previously specializing in American scene depictions, after the war he created images inspired by the bombed cities of Europe. In the late 1940s and early 1950s he taught studio courses at the Akron Art Institute and continued to exhibit on a regular basis. The Akron Art Institute mounted a solo exhibition of his paintings (1948). By the early 1960s Gleitsmann had stopped painting “for reasons known entirely only to himself.”
"Transformations in Cleveland Art" (CMA, 1996), p. 229