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Josef Zenk
"The Knockdown"

circa 1940

About the Item

Signed Lower Right Titled Lower Left Numbered Lower Center Josef Zenk (1904-2000) Josef Zenk was born in New York City in 1904. After graduating from high school he studied for three years at the National Academy of Design, followed by further studies at the Art Students League in New York. In 1926, Zenk moved to Utica, New York, where he began to produce landscape, figurative, and still life paintings. He was part of a small community of artists who in 1927-28 organized exhibitions with many of the leading American painters including Hopper, Sheeler and Fiene. In 1930 he was granted a full scholarship to study at the Munson Williams Proctor Institute where he later became an Instructor until World War II. While there, an exhibition of his work produced the greatest attendance of any show at the institution of that year. In 1942 "Zuni" by Zenk became the first work purchased by the Munson Williams Proctor Institute for its Central New York Artists Collection. After service in the Armed Forces from 1942-1945, Zenk left Utica and moved his studio to Palisades Park, New Jersey. Under the G.I. Bill he began to study at the New School in New York City. Along with Louis Schanker, a prominent woodcut artist and teacher at the New School, Zenk and a small group of printmakers formed Studio 74 for the purpose of exhibiting their color wood block prints. The group received immediate critical attention. The New York Times described the work of Josef Zenk as "particularly admirable". One of his prints "The Kiss" was chosen in 1949 as one of the best prints of the year and was exhibited in the National Exhibition of Prints held at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Zenk moved to Bucks County, Pennsylvania in the late 1940's and lived in Upper Black Eddy, a town along the Delaware River, ten miles north of New Hope. He maintained a studio in Palisades Park for while after the move, before eventually working fulltime from his studio in Pennsylvania. Zenk remained active painting and making woodblock prints, while also teaching art classes. He resided in Bucks County until the end of his life at the age of ninety six. Like several other important Pennsylvania and New Jersey artists, the work of Josef Zenk was only recently rediscovered and brought to light. For the remaining thirty five years of his life, he chose a somewhat reclusive lifestyle, away from the frenetic art scene. Josef Zenk's works have been shown in over twenty seven museums including the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Newark Museum, the Seattle Museum of Art, and the National Academy of Design. Through the many exhibitions during his career, he has progressed from a stylized realism in landscape and figure painting to a powerful modernist and abstract style with a strong sense of personal expression.
  • Creator:
  • Creation Year:
    circa 1940
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 22 in (55.88 cm)Width: 19 in (48.26 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Lambertville, NJ
  • Reference Number:
    Seller: 0002981stDibs: LU157910823

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Signed Lower Right Vaclav Vytlacil (1892-1984) He was born to Czechoslovakian parents in 1892 in New York City. Living in Chicago as a youth, he took classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, returning to New York when he was 20. From 1913 to 1916, he enjoyed a scholarship from the Art Students League, and worked with John C. Johansen (a portraitist whose expressive style resembled that of John Singer Sargent), and Anders Zorn. He accepted a teaching position at the Minneapolis School of Art in 1916, remaining there until 1921. This enabled him to travel to Europe to study Cézanne’s paintings and works of the Old Masters. He traveled to Paris, Prague, Dresden, Berlin, and Munich seeking the works of Titian, Cranach, Rembrandt, Veronese, and Holbein, which gave him new perspective. Vytlacil studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Munich, settling there in 1921. Fellow students were Ernest Thurn and Worth Ryder, who introduced him to famous abstractionist Hans Hofmann. He worked with Hofmann from about 1922 to 1926, as a student and teaching assistant. During the summer of 1928, after returning to the United States, Vytlacil gave lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, on modern European art. Soon thereafter, he became a member of the Art Students League faculty. After one year, he returned to Europe and successfully persuaded Hofmann to teach at the League as well. He spent about six years in Europe, studying the works of Matisse, Picasso, and Dufy. In 1935, he returned to New York and became a co-founder of the American Abstract Artists group in 1936. He later had teaching posts at Queens College in New York; the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California; Black Mountain College in North Carolina; and the Art Students League. His paintings exhibit a clear inclination toward modernism. His still lives and interiors from the 1920s indicate an understanding of the art of Cézanne. In the 1930s, his works displayed two very different kinds of art at the same time. His cityscapes and landscapes combine Cubist-inspired spatial concerns with an expressionistic approach to line and color. Vytlacil also used old wood, metal, cork, and string in constructions, influenced by his friend and former student, Rupert Turnbull. He eventually ceased creating constructions as he considered them too limiting. The spatial challenges of painting were still his preference. During the 1940s and 1950s, his works indicated a sense of spontaneity not felt in his earlier work. He married Elizabeth Foster in Florence, Italy, in 1927 and they lived and worked in Positano, Italy for extended periods of time. Later on, they divided their time between homes in Sparkill, New York and Chilmark, Massachusetts, where Vyt, as he was affectionately called, taught at the Martha's Vineyard Art...
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