Chaim Gross Nude Drawings and Watercolors

RECLINING NUDES, Signed Original Watercolor Drawing Chaim Gross (Austrian American, 1902-1991) Original mixed media - watercolor and graphite on paper, hand signed in pencil by Chaim Gross on lower right, very good condition, off-white cream archival acid-free mat, warm metallic pewter color wood frame. Framed size - 20 x 23 in., 2.5 inch, Image area 12.5 x 16 in. Frame is included. About the artist - Chaim Gross (1902-1991) was a modern American sculptor working in New York City from 1921 until his death in 1991. He was born in 1902 to a Jewish family in Austrian Galicia, in the village of Wolowa in the Carpathian Mountains. In 1911, his family moved to Kolomyia. During World War I, Russian forces invaded Austria-Hungary; amidst the turmoil, the Grosses fled Kolomyia. They returned when Austria retook the town in 1915, refugees of the war. When World War I ended, Gross and brother Avrom-Leib went to Budapest, where Gross attended the city's art academy and studied with painter Béla Uitz, though within a year a new regime under Miklos Horthy took over and attempted to expel all Jews and foreigners from the country. After being deported from Hungary, Gross began art studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna shortly before immigrating to New York City in 1921. In New York City, Gross's studies continued at the Educational Alliance Art School on the Lower East Side, led by Russian-American etcher Abbo Ostrowsky. Gross first began to exhibit his work as a student at the Alliance in 1922 (in the late 1920s, he joined their faculty). Gross also attended the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design from 1922-25, where he studied sculpture with Elie Nadelman and others, and at the Art Students League in 1926, with sculptor Robert Laurent. In 1926, Gross began to exhibit his sculpture at the Jewish Art Center (then in the Bronx), and in 1927, at the Salons of America exhibitions at the Anderson Galleries at 59th Street and Park Avenue. Beginning in 1928, he exhibited at the Whitney Studio Club at 10 West 8th Street (the precursor to the Whitney Museum of American Art), showing a watercolor "Circus" in their 13th Annual Exhibition of Paintings. In March 1932 Gross had his first solo exhibition of sculpture at Gallery 144 in New York City. Also in 1932, Gross married Renee Nechin (1909-2005), and they had two children, Yehudah and Mimi (Mimi Gross is a New York-based artist, and was married to the artist Red Grooms from 1963-1976). In 1933, Gross joined the government's PWAP (Public Works of Art Project), which transitioned into the WPA (Works Progress Administration). Under these programs Gross taught and demonstrated art, made sculptures for schools and public colleges, and created works for Federal buildings including the Federal Trade Commission Building, and for the France Overseas and Finnish Buildings at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Gross was also recognized during these years with a silver medal at the 1937 Exposition universelle in Paris. Chaim Gross, Sculptor by Josef Vincent Lombardo, the first major book on Gross, came out in 1949 and included a catalogue raisonne of his sculpture. In the 1950s Gross began to make more bronze...

This is a wonderful drawing by one of America's most treasured artists, Chaim Gross. Throughout his lifetime Gross has gone through tragedy and a real test of faith however, he has the unique ability to focus and direct his expression to the most joyful and beautiful works of art, such as the present lot. For more than sixty years Chaim Gross's art has expressed optimistic, affirming themes. His acrobats, cyclists, and mothers and children convey joyfulness, exuberance, love, and intimacy. This aspect of his work remained consistent with his Hasidic heritage, which teaches that "only in his childlike happiness is man nearest to God." Chaim Gross, born in Wolowa, Austria in 1904, was educated at the Beaux Arts Institute of Design and at the Art Student's League in New York. Chaim Gross's work was greatly influenced by his experiences during a period of international conflict, World War II. He had moved to Kolomyya from Wolowa to get a better education, but the Germans came to occupy, killing, raping, and looting. Gross and his family were chased from one village to the next. He wrote, "We were sleeping on roofs and in the fields, with the sound of cannon fire...