Biography
William Zorach was born in Lithuania on February 28, 1887, but when Zorach was only four years old his family immigrated to the Untied States and settled in Cleveland, Ohio. At a young age Zorach began working as an apprentice at a lithography company in Cleveland. By 1907 he had saved enough money to move to New York and study at the National Academy of Design. He then went to Paris in 1910 and studied at La Palette. During this time Zorach focused on painting, but began to experiment with sculpture. In Paris Zorach was also exposed to the Cubist and Fauvist movements. Zorach returned to the Untied States and with his wife he met in Paris and they set up a studio in New York. Zorach increasingly focused on sculpture, but was reluctant to give up painting so he didn’t completely set aside painting for sculpture until 1922.
Zorach’s work can be found in numerous public collections including: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.