| William Zorach | ||
| Birth Date: February 28, 1887 |
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| Death Date: November 15, 1966 Artist Gallery |
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| Although William Zorach abandoned oil painting mid-career to devote himself to sculpture, he painted in watercolor all his life. His sculpture is massive and figural; in watercolor, he indulged his love of nature for most of his works on paper are landscapes and are lyrical, brightly colored and delightfully pastoral in spirit.
Zorach came to this country in 1891 and spent most of his childhood in Cleveland. His interest in art surfaced early: at sixteen, he was apprenticed to a lithographer by day and studied at Cleveland Art School at night. Subsequently he trained at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League in New York. In 1910, he went to Paris and there he met his wife Marguerite Thompson and upon returning in 1912, he married her. The two of them developed parallel artistic careers, participating in many of the major contemporary art shows of their era – the Armory Show, the Forum Exhibition – living in impoverished but artistically rich circumstances. Summers were spent in the country, generally in dilapidated houses provided by friends or patrons, winters were spent working in New York at the periphery of the avant-garde artistic community. In 1922 Zorach turned to sculpture, which proved a more successful medium for him: in 1924, he had his first solo exhibition of sculpture at Kraushaar Galleries; his solo show at the Downtown Gallery in 1931 firmly established his reputation and resulted in many public commissions.
For the next several decades, Zoarch would teach sculpture at the Art Students League in New York, and would have frequent exhibitions of his sculpture, and occasional shows of his watercolors. Watercolor continued to be an important and appreciated medium for him for the remainder of his career: In 1930, he won the Art Institute of Chicago’s prestigious Logan Prize for his sculpture; the following year he won it again, this for his work in watercolor.
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