Chaim Gross | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Gross in 1963 | |
| Born | (1902-03-17)March 17, 1902 |
| Died | May 5, 1991(1991-05-05) (aged 89) New York City, U.S. |
| Education | Beaux-Arts Institute of Design Art Students League of New York |
| Known for | Sculpture,graphic art |
Chaim Gross (/xaɪ(ə)m/; March 17, 1902 – May 5, 1991) was an Americansculptor and educator ofHungarian Jewish origin. Gross studied and taught at theEducational Alliance Art School in New York City’sLower Manhattan.
Gross was born to a Jewish family inMáramaros County,Kingdom of Hungary, in the village of Ökörmező (now known asMizhhiria,Ukraine), in theCarpathian Mountains. In 1911, his family moved toKolomyia (which was annexed into theUkrainian SSR in 1939 and became part of newly independent Ukraine in 1991). DuringWorld War I, Russian forces invadedAustria-Hungary; amidst the turmoil, the Grosses fled Kolomyia. They returned when Austria retook the town in 1915, refugees of the war. When World War I ended, Gross and brother Avrom-Leib went toBudapest to join their older siblings Sarah and Pinkas. Gross applied to and was accepted by the art academy in Budapest and studied under the painterBéla Uitz, though within a year a new regime underMiklós Horthy took over and attempted to expel all Jews and foreigners from the country. After being deported from Hungary, Gross began art studies at theKunstgewerbeschule inVienna, Austria, shortly before immigrating to the United States in 1921.[1]
Gross' brother Naftoli had arrived in New York City in 1914. He sent money to Chaim and his other brother Avrom-Lieb, the two of whom traveled from Vienna toLe Havre, France, from where they took a boat to New York in March 1921.
Gross's studies continued in the United States at theBeaux-Arts Institute of Design, where he studied withElie Nadelman and others, and at theArt Students League of New York, withRobert Laurent. He also attended theEducational Alliance Art School, studying underAbbo Ostrowsky, at the same time asMoses Soyer,Raphael Soyer,Adolph Gottlieb, andPeter Blume.
In 1926, Gross began teaching atThe Educational Alliance, and continued teaching there for the next 50 years.Louise Nevelson was among his students at the Alliance (in 1934), during the time she was transitioning from painting to sculpture. He also taughtBernard Simon starting in 1938.[2][page needed][ISBN missing]
Gross began exhibiting sculpture in group shows of students at the Educational Alliance, and then at the Jewish Art Center in the Bronx. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he exhibited at the Salons of America exhibitions at theAnderson Galleries and, beginning in 1928, at the Whitney Studio Club (the precursor to theWhitney Museum of American Art).
In 1929, Gross experimented with printmaking, and created an important group of 15 linocuts and lithographs of landscapes, New York City streets and parks, women in interiors, the circus, and vaudeville. The entire suite is now in the collection of thePhiladelphia Museum of Art. Gross returned to the medium of printmaking in the 1960s, and produced approximately 200 works in the medium over the next two decades.
In March 1932, Gross had his first solo exhibition at Gallery 144 in New York City. For a short time they represented Gross, as well as his friendsMilton Avery,Moses Soyer,Ahron Ben-Shmuel and others.
Gross was primarily a practitioner of thedirect carving method, with the majority of his work being carved from wood. Other direct carvers in early 20th-century American art includeWilliam Zorach,Jose de Creeft, andRobert Laurent. Works by Chaim Gross can be found in major museums and private collections throughout the United States, with substantial holdings (27 sculptures) at theHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. A key work from this era, now at theSmithsonian American Art Museum, is the 1932 birds-eye mapleAcrobatic Performers, which is also only one and one quarter inch thick.[3] His work was also part of thesculpture event in theart competition at the1932 Summer Olympics.[4]
In 1933, Gross joined the U.S. government'sPublic Works of Art Project (PWAP), which transitioned into theWorks Progress Administration (WPA), which Gross worked for later in the 1930s. Under these programs Gross taught and demonstrated art, made sculptures that were placed in schools and public colleges, made work for Federal buildings including theFederal Trade Commission Building, and for the France Overseas and Finnish Buildings at the1939 New York World's Fair. Gross was also recognized during these years with a silver medal at theExposition universelle de 1937 in Paris, and in 1942, with a purchase prize at theMetropolitan Museum of Art's "Artists for Victory" exhibition for his wood sculpture of famed circus performerLillian Leitzel.
In 1938, filmmaker and historianLewis Jacobs made a 30-minute feature of Gross carving, calledTree Trunk to Head, showing Gross at work in hisEast Village studio on a portrait of his wifeRenee (/riːni/), who models in the film.
In 1949, Gross sketchedChaim Weizmann, president of Israel, at several functions in New York City where Weizmann was speaking. Gross began a portrait in clay and then traveled to Israel in the summer of that year hoping to be able to meet Weizmann and have him sit for a portrait. Weizmann was too ill, but Gross completed the bust in bronze later that year. Gross returned to Israel for three months in 1951 (the second of many trips there in the postwar years) to paint a series of 40 watercolors of life in various cities. This series was exhibited at Manhattan'sJewish Museum in 1953.
Chaim Gross, Sculptor by Josef Vincent Lombardo, the first major book on Gross, came out in 1949. It included a catalogue raisonne of his sculpture.
In the 1950s, Gross began to make more bronze sculptures alongside his wood and stone pieces, and in 1957 and 1959 he traveled to Rome to work with famed bronze foundries including the Nicci foundry. At the end of the decade, Gross was working primarily in bronze, which allowed him to create open forms, large-scale works and of course, multiple casts. Gross's large-scale bronzeThe Family, donated to New York City in 1991 in honor of MayorEd Koch, and installed at theBleecker Street Park at 11th Street, is now a fixture ofGreenwich Village.
In 1957, Gross publishedThe Techniques of Wood Sculpture, an influential how-to book with photographs of him at work by famed photographerEliot Elisofon. In 1959, a survey of Gross's sculpture in wood, stone, and bronze was featured in the exhibitFour American Expressionists curated byLloyd Goodrich at theWhitney Museum of American Art, with work byAbraham Rattner,Doris Caesar, andKarl Knaths. In 1963, Gross and his family moved from their longtime residence at 30 W 105th Street toGreenwich Village, following the purchase of a four-story historic townhouse and studio at 526 LaGuardia Place. The townhouse is now theRenee and Chaim Gross Foundation, winner of a 2015 Village Award from theGreenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, and open to the public.
In 1974, the Smithsonian American Art Museum held the exhibition,Chaim Gross: Sculpture and Drawings, organized by Janet A. Flint, Smithsonian Curator of Prints and Drawings. In 1976, a selection from Gross's important collection of historic African sculpture, formed since the late 1930s, was exhibited at theWorcester Art Museum in the showThe Sculptor's Eye: The African Art Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Chaim Gross.
In 1977, Gross had three retrospective exhibitions: at theLowe Art Museum at the University of Miami, followed by theMontclair Art Museum; and theJewish Museum in Manhattan. The Jewish Museum's exhibition catalog featured an important essay on Gross by art historian and modern American sculpture specialist Roberta K. Tarbell, Professor Emeritus atRutgers University.
Gross received multiple honorary doctorates in the 1970s and 80s: fromFranklin & Marshall College (1970);Yeshiva University (1978);Adelphi University (1980);Hebrew Union College (1984); andBrooklyn College (1986). In 1979, Gross was elected into theNational Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1981. In 1984, he was inducted into theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters, withJacob Lawrence andLukas Foss. Gross died at Beth Israel Hospital in May 1991 and was buried at Mount Lebanon Cemetery in Queens, New York. In the fall of 1991,Allen Ginsberg gave an important tribute to Gross at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which is published in theirProceedings. In 1994,Forum Gallery, which now represents the Chaim Gross estate, held a memorial exhibition featuring a sixty-year survey of Gross's work.
Gross was a professor of printmaking and sculpture at both theEducational Alliance and theNew School for Social Research inNew York City, as well as at theBrooklyn Museum Art School, theMoMA art school, the Art Student's League and the New Art School (which Gross ran briefly withAlexander Dobkin,Raphael Soyer andMoses Soyer).
Gross was a member of the New York Artists Equity Association and theFederation of Modern Painters and Sculptors. He was a founder and served as the first president of theSculptors Guild.
Gross summered for many years inProvincetown, Massachusetts.[5]
In 1932, Gross married Renee Nechin (/riːni/; d. 2005), and they had two children, Yehuda and Mimi.Mimi Gross is a New York-based artist. She was married to the artistRed Grooms from 1963-1976. When Gross died in 1991,Allen Ginsberg wrote a tribute to his life, which ended in a quote that reads: "So he's [Gross] now sitting drinking tea with old acquaintances,Marc Chagall,Pablo Picasso, & the Soyer Boys in heaven or whatever Shul their shades attend."[6]
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