NYSWA FOUNDERS
The New York Society of Women Artists
Marguerite Thompson Zorach (1887-1968)
Lucile Lundquist Blanch (1895-1981)
Concetta Scaravaglione (1900-1975)
Today, the New York Society of Women Artists finds itself tasked with remaking itself. We aspire to birth new schools of art and encourage new avenues of exchange and discussion. As we embrace women who work in many diverse artistic styles from abstract to realism, we dedicate ourselves with a look to the future and a respect for our past.
Research by Rachelle Weisberger, Chair of the Keystone Committee.
Marguerite Thompson Zorach (1887-1968)
Trying to balance work and family, Marguerite Thompson Zorach faced challenges that still resonate with today’s woman. She was a painter, graphic designer, and textile artist who also cared for two children along with household duties. This left less time for her uninterrupted painting.
Growing up in Fresno, California, Zorach began drawing at a very young age. In 1908, at age 21, she left Stanford University for Paris and attended the post-impressionist school, Academie de La Palette. There she met her future husband, William Zorach, an American sculptor and painter.
Paris, capital of the arts, awakened her artistic sensibility to a a new non-traditional approach to painting. She was drawn to the vibrant colors and painterly techniques of the Fauvist painters and also to the spatial structure of the Cubists. In Paris her talent was recognized. Zorach’s work was included in the 1910 and 1911 annual exhibitions--just two years after her arrival there.
Moving to New York City in 1912, Marguerite and William Zorach married and settled in Greenwich Village. That celebratory year also marked her first solo exhibition in Los Angeles and included her etchings and watercolors. From then on, Zorach became a pioneer and advocate of modern art in America.
The following year both she and her husband participated in the 1913 Armory Show. By all accounts, in 1916, Zorach was considered “the best known woman artist of her generation in America.” Interestingly, Georgia O’Keefe who was Zorach’s age, was unknown at that time.
Then in 1917 she expanded her creative talents when she began making what Zorach called, “her modernistic pictures done in wool.” These embroidered tapestries were exhibited in a solo show in 1923 as she broke down barriers between crafts and fine art.
In 1925, as President of the New York Society of Women Artists, Marguerite Zorach was an outspoken advocate for female artists. She railed against the bias and sexism of dealers “who refused to take women artists seriously.”
In the 1930’s Zorach returned to painting and continued to exhibit her artwork until her death in 1968.
Today Marguerite Zorach’s work is well represented in numerous museum collections across the United States. These include the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Farnsworth Art Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.