At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism
May 7, 2022–Feb 26, 2023
Marguerite Zorach
22
Born 1887 in Santa Rosa, CA
Died 1968 in Brooklyn, NY
Marguerite Zorach (née Thompson) traveled to Paris in the fall of 1908 and quickly began uniting Fauvist color and compressed space with the cloisonnisme technique, pioneered by Paul Gauguin, of delineating areas of color with dark outlines. Her bold art caught the attention of American painter William Finkelstein while the two were studying at the Académie de La Palette. A relationship ensued, and the two married in New York in 1912, choosing the last name “Zorach” (William’s given first name). Both had work included in the Armory show, which opened a few months after their arrival in the city. Marguerite, inspired by the thirteen Henri Matisse paintings on view, inaugurated a series of sinuous, brilliantly colored Arcadian landscapes that recalled the French artist’s nudes. She retained this style and subject matter through 1916, when the predominance of Cubism in New York—following the arrival of the French Cubists Albert Gleizes, Marcel Duchamp, and Francis Picabia—led her to adopt a more somber palette, fractured vocabulary, and densely packed pictorial space. By then, faced with raising two children, she increasingly devoted her energy to making “tapestry paintings” using dyed wool. The works, along with commissioned rugs and bedspreads, generated income for the family but clouded the art establishment’s view of her work.
Landscape with Figures, c. 1913
Marguerite Zorach, Landscape with Figures, c. 1913. Gouache and watercolor on silk, 11 1/2 × 18 in. (29.2 × 45.7 cm. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from Mary and Garrett Moran T.2022.114
Artists
- Richmond Barthé
- Ben Benn
- Albert Bloch
- Oscar Bluemner
- Patrick Henry Bruce
- Charles Burchfield
- Arthur B. Carles
- John Covert
- E.E. Cummings
- Imogen Cunningham
- James Daugherty
- Arthur B. Davies
- Stuart Davis
- Manierre Dawson
- Charles Demuth
- Isami Doi
- Aaron Douglas
- Arthur Dove
- Charles Duncan
- Yun Gee
- Marsden Hartley
- Rebecca Salsbury James
- Loïs Mailou Jones
- Taizo Kato
- Gaston Lachaise
- Blanche Lazzell
- Stanton Macdonald-Wright
- Man Ray
- John Marin
- Elie Nadelman
- Louise Nevelson
- Carl Newman
- Isamu Noguchi
- Chiura Obata
- Georgia O'Keeffe
- Walter Pach
- Agnes Pelton
- Nancy Elizabeth Prophet
- Henry Lyman Sayen
- Charles G. Shaw
- Harry Shigeta
- Henrietta Shore
- Pamela Colman Smith
- Joseph Stella
- Florine Stettheimer
- John Storrs
- Henry Fitch Taylor
- Helen Torr
- Jay Van Everen
- Adele Watson
- Max Weber
- Edith Clifford Williams
- Marguerite Zorach
- William Zorach