Karl Zerbe
Karl Zerbe | |
---|---|
Born | 1903 Berlini, Germeny |
Died | November 4, 1972 Tallahassee, Florida |
Occupation | expressionist painter |
Karl Zerbe (b. Berlin, Germany, 1903; d. Tallahassee, Florida, November 24, 1972) was a German-born American painter.
The works of Karl Zerbe are significant because they record “the response of a distinguished artist of basically European sensibility to the physical and cultural scene of the New World”[1]
Biography
Karle Zerbe was born September 16, 1903 in Berlin, Germany. The family lived in Paris, France from 1904-1914, where his father was an executive in an electrical supply concern. In 1914 they moved to Frankfurt, Germany where they lived until 1920. Karl Zerbe studied chemistry in 1920 at the Technische Hochschule, Friedberg . From 1921-1923 he lived in Munich, where he studied painting at the Debschitz School, mainly under Josef Eberz. From 1924-1926 Karl Zerbe worked and traveled in Italy on a fellowship from the City of Munich. In 1932 his oil painting titled: ‘’Herbstgarten’’ (autumnal garden), of 1929, was acquired by the National-Galerie, Berlin; in 1937, the painting was destroyed by the Nazis as “degenerative art.” From 1937- 1955 Karl Zerbe was the head of Department of Painting, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In 1939 Karl Zerbe became U.S. Citizen and the same year for the first time he used encaustic.
He was grouped together with the Boston painters Jack Levine and Hyman Bloom as a member of the Boston Expressionist school of painting. He served as Head of Painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from 1937 to 1955.Karl Zerbe
Solo Exhibitions
- 1922: Gurlitt Gallery, Berlin, Germany.
- 1926: Georg Caspari Gallery, Munich, Germany; Kunsthalle, Bremen, Germany; Osthaus Museum, Hagen, Germany.
1934: Germanic Museum (now Busch-Reisinger Museum), Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
- 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937: Marie Sterner Galleries, N.Y.C.
- 1936, 1938, 1939, 1940: Grace Horne Galleries, Boston, MA.
- 1941: Vose Galleries, Boston; Buchholz Gallery, N.Y.C.
- 1943: Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA.
- 1943, 1946, 1948, 1951, 1952: The Downtown Gallery, N.Y.C.
- 1943, 1947: The Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA.
- 1945, 1946: The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
- 1946: The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI.
- 1948, 1949: Philadelphia Art Alliance, Philadelphia, PA.
- 1948, 1955: Boris Mirski Gallery, Boston, MA.
- 1950: Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, NY.
- 1951-1952: Retrospective Exhibition circulated by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, traveled to: Baltimore Museum of Art; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, CO; Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH; Florida Gulf Coast Art Center, Clearwater, FL; M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA;
- 1954: The Allan Gallery, N.Y.C.
- 1958: Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL; The Ringling Brothers Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL.
- 1958, 1959, 1960: Nordness Gallery, N.Y.C.
- 1960: New Arts Gallery, Atlanta, GA.
- 1961-1962: Retrospective Exhibition circulated by The American Federation of Arts, Boston University.
References
Books
- Bram Dijkstra, American expressionism : art and social change, 1920-1950, (New York : H.N. Abrams, in association with the Columbus Museum of Art, 2003.) ISBN 0810942313
- Judith Bookbinder, Boston modern: figurative expressionism as alternative modernism (Durham, N.H. : University of New Hampshire Press ; Hanover : University Press of New England, ©2005.) ISBN 1584654880