William Zorach Sold at Auction Prices

Sculptor, Painter, Commercial artist, Lithographer, Wood Sculptor, Stone sculptor, Water color painter, b. 1887 - d. 1966

(b Eurburg, Lithuania, 1887; d Bath, Maine, 1966) American sculptor and painter. William Zorach worked in many media including oil, watercolor, engraving and lithography, but he is best known for his sculptures. Zorach’s family immigrated to the United States from Lithuania in 1891. They settled in Cleveland, Ohio where he began his study of painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art. He went on to study at the National Academy of Design in New York before spending two years in Paris where he met his future wife, the painter Marguerite Thompson. Upon his return to the states Zorach settled in New York. He became successful as a painter, painting abstract, cubist compositions. In 1917 however he began to take an interest in sculpture. With no formal training in the discipline, he sculpted figural pieces from wood, stone and cast bronze, which drew inspiration from ancient Egyptian, Greek, Asian and African sculpture as well as from the works of European modernists like Brancusi.