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William ZorachWatercolor Painting by William Zorach, Titled "Redwoods, Yosemite Valley", 19201920
1920
About the Item
William Zorach, 1887-1966
Redwoods, Yosemite Valley, 1920
Watercolor and pencil
15 ¾ x 13 ⅜ inches
Signed (at lower right): William Zorach
WZorach-7
Provenance:
Estate of William Zorach
Exhibited:
William Zorach, 1887-1996, Sculpture, Drawings and Watercolors, Zabriskie Gallery, New
York; Feb. 10 – March 14, 1998.
William Zorach was born in Lithuania in 1889, and immigrated to the United States with his
family in 1893. Settling in Cleveland with his parents, he worked as a lithographer from 1902-
1908, making enough money to study painting with Henry G. Keller at the School of Art. In
1910, Zorach traveled to Paris to study in La Palette, where he was encouraged to develop his
own unique style rather than adhere to traditional teachings. Zorach once said, “I began to be
conscious of the various modern influences that were invading the art world…I was disturbed
and confused, and yet I felt that I was a very young man entering a new age. The forces creating
modern art seemed more alive to me than anything I had known or anything being done in
America.” 1 Together with his wife Marguerite, William Zorach produced a number of Cubist-
style paintings for the American Armory Show of 1913, and the Forum Exhibition in New York
in 1916.
Around 1917, Zorach followed the lead of cubist artist Pablo Picasso and began experimenting
with wood and stone carvings. By 1922, he devoted himself entirely to sculpture, and like
Picasso, became fascinated in “primitive art”—the ritual objects and sculpture pieces of Oceanic,
Native American and African tribes. Zorach’s work developed in its use of block-like forms with
progressive suppression of detail—drawing elements from sources as disparate as the
contemporary cubist and modernist movements, and combining them with forms seen in early
African sculpture. Though the forms of his sculpture were often abstract, Zorach primarily
focused upon a traditional subject matter, producing such well-known sculptures as Young Girl,
now in the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Mother and Child, in the collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Today, William Zorach is known as one of the earliest and most
influential American artists dedicated to direct carving. Zorach also made an impression as a
teacher and writer, facilitating a major change in the aesthetic philosophy and technique of
sculpture in the United States.
During the summers from 1913 to 1922, Zorach and his wife Marguerite painted mostly in the
country, and also while vacationing in the mountains of New Hampshire, Provincetown,
Massachusetts, and Yosemite National Park. Both artists used these excursions to collaborate and
experiment with new mediums, often using the various landscapes as inspiration. Of his works in
watercolor, Zorach once said, “there are things one does for the pure love of form and color, in
the easy abandonment to the moods and the fancies of the moment. These are my watercolors.” 2
Zorach’s watercolors of Yosemite National Park are thought to be some of his finest works, and
representative of the collaboration between William and Marguerite. In Redwoods, Yosemite
Valley, William Zorach’s landscape takes on a flattened, one dimensional style with very little
shading and tonal variation, similar to Marguerite’s character study Indian Family. In the center
of the composition is a teal evergreen tree placed slightly ahead of the rest, though all take on the
same teardrop shape. The rolling, royal blue mountains in the background loom precariously
over the forest, appearing almost as if they are intermixed between the trees. The shapes are
firmly outlined, and smaller brushstrokes give Redwoods, Yosemite Valley a more confined,
finished look.
1 William Zorach, Art is My Life (New York and Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1967), Page 22
2 Ibid, 14.
Bibliography:
J.I.H. Baur, William Zorach, (New York, 1959)
Roberta Tarbell, Catalogue Raisonne of William Zorach’s Carved Sculpture, (diss., Newark,
University of Delaware, 1976)
William Zorach, Art is My Life (New York and Cleveland: The World Publishing Company,
1967)
- Creator:William Zorach (1887 - 1966, American)
- Creation Year:1920
- Dimensions:Height: 15.75 in (40.01 cm)Width: 13.75 in (34.93 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)
- Medium:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:New York, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU2157212441142
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