William Zorach

William Zorach , 1887-1966, American sculptor, b. Lithuania. His family emigrated to the United States when he was four and settled near Cleveland. After studying at the Cleveland School of Art and the National Academy of Design, New York City, Zorach spent two years in France. Shortly after his return to the United States he took up permanent residence in New York. In 1922 he turned from painting to sculpture. Without formal training in this field he evolved a personal and monumental style that placed him among the foremost sculptors of his day. Carving mainly in stone and in wood, he is known for the simplicity and solidity of his forms. His works are in many private and public collections. In New York the Whitney Museum owns his Pegasus and Future Generation; the Radio City Music Hall has his Spirit of the Dance. Zorach taught at the Art Students League.

Bibliography: See his Zorach Explains Sculpture (1960) and Art Is My Life (1967); study by J. I. H. Baur (1959).

Zorach, William (1889–1966). Lithuanian-born American sculptor. His family emigrated to the USA when he was 4 and he was brought up in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was apprenticed to a commercial lithographer and attended evening classes at Cleveland Institute of Art. In 1907 he moved to New York and studied at the National Academy of Design. After living in Paris for a year, 1910–11, he returned to Cleveland, then settled permanently in New York in 1912 (from the 1950s he also had a summer home in Bath, Maine). Initially Zorach worked as a painter in a Fauvist style, but he took up sculpture in 1917 and abandoned painting (apart from water-colours) about five years later. His sculpture is figurative and its salient characteristics are firm contours, block-like bulk, and suppression of details: ‘I owe most', he said, ‘to the great periods of primitive carving in the past—not to the modern or the classical Greeks, but to the Africans, the Persians, the Mesopotamians, the archaic Greeks and of course to the Egyptians.’ He was a pioneer in America of direct carving in stone and wood and in this as well as in his formal austerity he exercised a powerful influence on modern American sculpture. He had numerous major commissions, including relief carvings for the Municipal Court Building, New York (1958). His most most famous work is not a carving, however, but the alumimium Spirit of the Dance (1932) for Radio City Music Hall, New York—a heroic female figure that was banished for a time because of its nudity but reinstated through public pressure. Zorach taught at the Art Students League from 1929 to 1966. He wrote two books, Zorach Explains Sculpture (1947) and a posthumously published autobiography, Art is my Life (1967), as well as numerous articles on art; two of his articles on his own work were put together in book form as William Zorach (1945).

His wife, Marguerite Thompson Zorach (1887–1968), was one of America's leading modernist painters in the years immediately before and immediately after the Armory Show (1913), in which both she and her husband exhibited. At this time she painted in a style influenced by Fauvism and Expressionism. In her later career, however, much of her time was spent selflessly helping her husband with his sculptural commissions, producing many of the preliminary drawings for his work.

Zorach, William (1889–1966). Lithuanian-born American sculptor. Initially Zorach worked as a painter in a vivid Fauvist style, but he took up sculpture in 1917 and abandoned painting (apart from watercolours) about five years later. His sculpture is figurative and its salient characteristics are firm contours, block-like bulk, and suppression of details: ‘I owe most’, he said, ‘to the great periods of primitive carving in the past—not to the modern or the classical Greeks, but to the Africans, the Persians, the Mesopotamians, the archaic Greeks and of course to the Egyptians.’ He was a pioneer in America of the revival of direct carving in stone and wood and in this as well as in his formal austerity he exercised a powerful influence on modern American sculpture. He had numerous major commissions, including relief carvings for the Municipal Court Building, New York (1958). His most famous work is not a carving, however, but the aluminium Spirit of the Dance (1932) for Radio City Music Hall, New York—a heroic female figure that was banished for a time because of its nudity but reinstated by public pressure. Zorach taught at the Art Students League from 1929 to 1966. His wife, Marguerite Thompson Zorach (1887–1968), was one of America's leading modernist painters in the years immediately before and immediately after the Armory Show (1913), in which both she and her husband exhibited. At this time she painted in a style influenced by Fauvism and Expressionism. In her later career, however, much of her time was spent selflessly helping her husband with his sculptural commissions, producing many of the preliminary drawings for his work.