20th Century Decorative Arts Including Property from the Estate of Cecile Singer

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Lot 53
  • 53

William Zorach

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Description

  • William Zorach
  • ''Tooky''
  • signed W. ZORACH, dated 1927, and numbered 3/6; underside with a Collection of Zorach Children label dated 1936 and titled Tooky
  • bronze, metal base

Provenance

Collection of the Zorach Children
Estate of Charles Simon
Christie's East, April 23, 1997, lot 194

Literature

William Zorach, Art is My Life, Cleveland, 1967, fig. 41 (for the model in granite)

Catalogue Note

The Lithuanian-born American artist and sculptor William Zorach (1887-1966) began his artistic career as a painter and first discovered his interest in sculpture when he executed carvings for a series of block prints in 1917. Bronze-cast animals, especially cats, are a recurrent theme in the sculptor’s oeuvre. They were often produced in very small editions, as evidenced by this model, the third in a series of six.  In 1932 Zorach created an aluminum cast for Radio City Music Hall entitled “Spirit of the Dance.” He also designed “Builders of the Future,” a sculpture for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The Whitney Museum of American Art dedicated a retrospective to his work in all media in 1959.

--Martina Grünewald