William Zorach

American (1887-1966)

Painter, sculptor and writer William Zorach was born in Lithuania in 1889 but moved to the United States with his family in 1893, settling in Cleveland. Zorach stayed in Ohio for almost 15 years pursuing his artistic endeavors. He worked as a lithographer as a teenager and went on to study painting with Henry G. Keller at the Cleveland School of Art from 1905-1907. Zorach continued his artistic training at the Art Students League in New York City and at La Palette in Paris. William and his wife, artist Marguerite Zorach, joined a small group of modern artists in New England, exhibiting Fauvist paintings at the Armory Show in 1913 as well as Cubist and Expressionist works at the Forum Exhibition in New York in 1916. Zorach’s works can be found in numerous private, corporate, and public collections across the country including such acclaimed locales as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art, as well as numerous college and university collections.