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Chaim GrossCircus Performers1960
1960
About the Item
Circus Performers 1960
work size 11x13.5
Chaim Gross (1904 Austria–1991 USA) will always be remembered as one of the foremost American artist : painter, sculptors who practice direct carving in wood.
Born in the Carpathian Mountains in Austrian Galicia, Gross was the son of a lumber merchant. He displayed an interest in drawing at an early age and throughout his life produced a prodigious number of graphic works, many of which were preparatory studies for his sculptures. After a turbulent nomadic existence caused by World War I, Gross immigrated to New York City in 1921. He first studied drawing in night classes at the Educational Alliance art school while working during the day as a delivery boy.
A friend's remark that Gross's drawings had a very sculptural quality provided the impetus to study this medium at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, where he was briefly taught by Elie Nadelman. In 1927 he attended the Art Students League, receiving only two months of instruction in direct carving from Robert Laurent. That same year he quit his job in order to concentrate on art and to begin a teaching career in sculpture at the Educational Alliance, which would continue until 1989. In 1932, in the midst of the Depression, Gross had his first solo exhibition at The Gallery 144 in New York. Like many other artists, he benefited greatly from the support of the New Deal's Public Works of Art Project. In the late 1930s the Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture commissioned him to execute several works for federal buildings; these helped to establish him as a major contemporary sculptor.
Gross gained renown as an advocate of direct carving. Between 1926 and 1949, seventy-five percent of his works were in wood and ten percent in stone. Although he used hand tools exclusively, he preferred the hardest woods, particularly those with a dark color or pronounced grain. In contrast, however, he favored soft but colorful stone. His sculptures were predominantly totemic, figurative images of women. The human body became a source of abstract invention in which Gross simplified forms to stress dynamic rhythms; realism was secondary. Every carving represented a synthesis of form and medium. He distorted forms to retain the cylindrical sensation of the block of wood. A sense of compression in the shapes infused them with an expansiveness and a monumentality.
After World War II, Gross began to explore different subjects and techniques. The loss of family members in the Holocaust provoked an interest in Judaic subject matter. By 1957, sculptures modeled in plaster on an armature for casting in bronze began to outnumber his direct carvings. In contrast to his carvings, the bronzes revealed a new freedom to extend forms into space and incorporate space into his compositions. In building up the plasters, he utilized carving techniques that contributed to the angular forms characteristic of his bronzes.
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."
George Gurney Chaim Gross: A Celebration (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1996)
- Creator:Chaim Gross (1904-1991, American)
- Creation Year:1960
- Dimensions:Height: 19 in (48.26 cm)Width: 21 in (53.34 cm)Depth: 5 in (12.7 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Lake Worth Beach, FL
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU192216274592
Chaim Gross
Chaim Gross was one of the most important American sculptors of the 20th century. Along with other noted sculptors William Zorach and Jose de Creeft, Gross was primarily a practitioner of the direct carving method, and a majority of his work was carved from wood. Born in Ukraine in 1904, Gross studied at the art academy in Budapest under painter Béla Uitz, followed by art studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna. He immigrated to the United States with two of his brothers in 1921 and continued his studies at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design with Elie Nadelman and others, and the Art Students League with sculptor and direct carver Robert Laurent. He also attended the Educational Alliance Art School at the same time as Peter Blume, Adolph Gottlieb and Moses and Raphael Soyer. Thereafter, Gross began an illustrious career that included important public commissions via his work for the Works Progress Administration and solo and group shows at prestigious galleries and museums such as the Whitney and the Smithsonian. Gross was also recognized with a silver medal at the Exposition Universelle de 1937 in Paris and 1942 with a purchase prize at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Artists for Victory exhibition for his wood sculpture of famed circus performer Lillian Leitzel. Gross also had a long career as a professor of printmaking and sculpture at various institutions including the The New School for Social Research, Art Students League and New Art School (which Gross ran briefly with fellow artists Alexander Dobkin and Moses and Raphael Soyer). But he had his longest tenure of 50 years as a professor at his alma mater, the Educational Alliance Art School, where he taught Louise Nevelson in 1934 and helped guide her transition from painter to one of the most important female sculptors of her generation. Gross received multiple honorary doctorates in the 70s and 80s and his work can be found in major museums and private collections throughout the United States, with substantial holdings at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC. Gross died in 1991.
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