William Zorach

Private Collection, New York

Sotheby’s, New York, 22 September 1987, lot 169 (consigned by the above)

Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Autumn, New Hampshire was executed in 1917—the same year William Zorach crafted his first sculpture, the medium he later became best known for. This was a pivotal moment for the careers of him and his wife Marguerite Zorach, an artist in her own right, as they embraced the height of their Cubist period between 1915 and 1918. “This was a transition period for us in art,” Zorach wrote in his autobiography. “We had to dig into ourselves for material and had to build the material we found into new forms until it evolved a life of its own.” (William Zorach, Art is My Life: An Autobiography, Cleveland and New York, 1967, p. 49)

In the present work, Zorach daringly tests between abstraction and representation, rendering the surrounding New Hampshire mountains into vibrant hues that seamlessly meld into each other. Experimenting with color and composition in a way that belies his Expressionist, Cubist and Fauvist influences, Autumn, New Hampshire is an extraordinary example of Zorach’s poetic visual language during a turning point in his development as an artist.