Nathaniel Kaz

Rhapsody

1952

Nathaniel Kaz was awarded the Michigan Sculpture prize at the age of 12, and at 14, began his formal art education at the Art Students League of New York under George Bridgman and William Zorach, and started attending the Cooper Union in the evenings. Kaz worked for the Works Project Administration in 1937–38. He joined the Art Students League faculty in 1947, where he taught until 1999. Kaz was a fellow of the National Sculpture Society, a founding member of the Sculptors Guild in New York and an Academician of the National Academy of Design. Having received his earliest award at the age of 12, he went on to receive numerous honors and awards throughout his career including first prize in an international competition to create a 60-foot sculpture for the United Nations General Assembly Building, a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, Alfred G.B. Steel Memorial Prize from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Agop Agopoff Award, among others. He has bestowed the Lifetime Achievement Award in Sculpture the Westchester County and the Sculptors' Guild at "The Sculpture Forum on the Plaza" exhibition in 2006. Kaz exhibited across the US at the Art Institute of Chicago, Sculptors Guild in New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Museum of Natural History, Greenwich Village Art Gallery, National Academy of Design and in Italy at the Museo dei Bozzettiand Palazzo Mediceo Seravezza, among others. In 1991, the Art Students League presented a solo retrospective of his work entitled Sculpture — From Then Until Now, 1927–1991. Kaz's work is held in the permanent collections across the US at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, National Academy Museum and School, Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, New York University Art Collection, The Jewish Museum, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., New Britain Museum of American Art and in Italy, at the Museo dei Bozzetti.