Nathaniel Kaz

American (1917-2010)

Born in New York City in 1917, artist Nathaniel Kaz was awarded the Michigan Sculpture prize at the age of twelve, and at fourteen, began his formal art education at the Art Students League under George Bridgman and William Zorach attending Cooper Union in the evenings. Kaz worked for the Works Project Administration in 1937-1938. 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 twelve, 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, the Alfred G.B. Steel Memorial Prize from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Agop Agopoff Award, among others. He was bestowed the Lifetime Achievement in Sculpture Award by Westchester County and the Sculptors’ Guild at “The Sculpture Forum on the Plaza” exhibition in 2006. 

Kaz exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, Sculptor’s Guild in New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Natural History, New York, Greenwich Gallery, New York, National Academy of Design, Museo dei Bozzetti, Pietrasanta, Italy and at the Palazzo Mediceo di Seravezza, Italy, 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 of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, National Academy Museum, Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, New York University Art Collection, The Jewish Museum, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, National Gallery, Washington D.C., The New Britain Museum and at the Museo dei Bozzetti, Pietrasanta in Italy.