The Zorachs were an important part of the 20th century American Modernist art movement for over 50 years.
Their story is one of love and success.
In the early years of the 20th century, fresh winds began to stir the musty world of American culture, a culture fettered to the past and to Europe for its models and inspiration. This was the beginning of American modernism.
In contrast to previous traditions, modernism was less realistic, but more self-expressive, innovative, inclusive in its subjects, and aware of social issues and technological changes, including the alienation produced by contemporary life. Although modernism affected music and literature, its clearest manifestations occurred in the visual arts. There was nascent, rudimentary, purely American modernism in the Ashcan School and The Eight. A small group of American artists, some of whom studied in Paris, initially responded to Matisse’s Fauvism and Picasso’s Cubism, but their number rapidly expanded and diversified. When they first exhibited, they were regarded as radical and reprehensible and elicited storms of protest. They were, in fact, a remarkable group.
In contrast to European artists, these American artists developed more clearly differentiated, unique voices. In addition to finding inspiration from African art (as had been common in Europe), they looked to other cultures and, perhaps most importantly, to their own, American folk art. They established an ethos of individual expression that may have enabled the development of the first American-created international movement, Abstract Expressionism. There was a multiplicity of styles and subjects, individualistic or Fauvist, Cubist, color painters, Precisionism, and later Regionalism and Social Realism. Among these founding American modernists were, Davis, Demuth, Dove, Hartley, Lachaise, Nadelman, O’Keefe, Sheeler, Marguerite Thompson Zorach and William Zorach.
Marguerite Zorach
Marguerite Zorach was one of the first artists in America, male or female, to be a proponent and practitioner of modern art. Initially best known for her Fauvist and Cubist paintings, Marguerite was soon recognized for having elevated embroidery into a fine art. She further developed her personal style by adding new elements to Fauvism and Cubism, expanding her range of subjects and expression. For a time her reputation was eclipsed by that of her husband, typical of the then dismissive attitudes toward female artists, but she is now highly regarded and sought after. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of both preeminent and smaller museums across the United States.
William Zorach
William “Bill” Zorach is a classic American success story. He emigrated from Lithuania to the United States as a young child and studied art in New York, and then Paris in the early 1900s. He was regarded as a founder of the early American modernist movement, first as a painter painting in a Fauvist and later a Cubist style. Whatever his success as an oil painter, Bill found that he was more drawn to sculpting and to painting with watercolors. He taught himself to sculpt, not only modeling works but also developing the kind of sculpture style known as direct carving. William was among the best known and respected sculptors of his generation and was beloved as a teacher as well. His watercolors, too, are greatly admired. His work can be found in public installations and in the permanent collections of both preeminent and smaller museums throughout the country.
