February 28, 2012
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William Zorach (February 28, 1887 – November 15, 1966) was a Lithuanian-American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and writer. He won the Logan Medal of the arts.


Born Zorach Gorfinkel in 1889, in Jurbarkas (Russian: Eurburg) in Lithuania as the eighth of ten children, Zorach (then his given name) emigrated with his family to the United States in 1894. They settled in Cleveland, Ohio, under the name "Finkelstein". In school, his first name was changed to "William" by a teacher. 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.

He married Marguerite Thompson (1887 - 1968) in 1911. The couple adopted his original given name, Zorach, as a common surname.

William and his wife 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, Radio City Music Hall, as well as numerous college and university collections.

In 1964 Zorach received a D.F.A. from Bates College. He taught at the Art Students League of New York between 1929 and 1960. His daughter, Dahlov Ipcar, is an artist also. She currently resides in Maine.

He died in Bath, Maine, on 15 November 1966.