ZORACH, WILLIAM

ZORACH, WILLIAM (1887–1966), U.S. sculptor and painter. Lithuanian-born William Zorach immigrated with his parents to the United States in 1891, settling in Ohio. Zorach only completed school up to the eighth grade, forced into working because of the family's impoverishment. He studied lithography in the evenings at the Cleveland School of Art in 1903 and soon thereafter he began earning a wage as a commercial lithographer. After he had saved some money, Zorach moved to New York City in 1907 where he received two years of additional training at the National Academy of Design. Again funded by money earned from his work as a lithographer, Zorach went to Paris to study art at La Palette in 1910. In Paris, Zorach met Marguerite Thompson, an American also studying at La Palette. Marguerite's influence, as well as the avant-garde atmosphere in France, effected Zorach's painting style, which became Fauvist in conception. His colorful paintings were first exhibited publicly at the Salon-d'Automne (1911). Financial circumstances forced Zorach back to Cleveland in late 1911, but by December 1912, he had earned enough money as a lithographer to return to New York, where he and Marguerite married. Zorach's paintings remained Fauvist-inspired until around 1916, at which time he adopted a Cubist idiom. Zorach carved his first sculpture in 1917. He gave up painting entirely to focus on sculpture in 1922. Early sculptures were stylized and angular in conception, akin to the Cubist style of his canvases. Soon Zorach adopted the more rounded, simplified, classicized forms for which he is best known in directly carved works such as the 36-inch-tall mahogany Mother and Child (1922, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). His first solo exhibition of sculpture was held at the Kraushaar Galleries in New York (1924). Many of Zorach's sculptures, mostly carved out of wood and stone, focus on themes of family. He executed several public commissions, including a monumental marble figure of Benjamin Franklin (1936–37) for the Benjamin Franklin Post Office in Washington, D.C., and a 16-foot-tall group sculpture, Builders of the Future, for the 1939 World's Fair. Upon request, Zorach submitted a design for a proposed memorial for the Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Although the memorial never materialized, a plaster model titled Monument to Six Million Jews (1949, Zorach family collection) survives. Designed to be viewed in the round, on one side of the tombstone shaped pedestal topped by a menorah stands a woman protecting her child and on the other side a man looking upward to heaven beseechingly. In addition to his artistic production, Zorach wrote articles on art and two books: a primer on sculpture and his autobiography. He also taught at several institutions, including the Art Students League for 30 years beginning in 1929 and Columbia University (1932–35). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: P.S. Wingert, The Sculpture of William Zorach (1938); W. Zorach, Zorach Explains Sculpture (1947); J.I.H. Baur, William Zorach (1959); W. Zorach, Art Is My Life (1967). (Samantha Baskind (2nd ed.)