Karl Zerbe Explained

Karl Zerbe
Birth Date:	16 September 1903
Birth Place:	Berlin, German Empire
Death Place:	Tallahassee, Florida, United States
Nationality:	American
Alma Mater:	Technische Hochschule Friedberg, Debschitz School
Movement:	Expressionism
Spouse:	Marion Zerbe
Employer:	School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Florida State University
Known For:	painting

Karl Zerbe (September 16, 1903  - November 24, 1972)^{[1] [2]} was a German-born American painter and educator.

Biography

Zerbe was born on September 16, 1903, in Berlin, Germany. The family lived in Paris, France, from 1904 to 1914, where his father was an executive in an electrical supply concern. In 1914 they moved to Frankfurt, Germany where they lived until 1920. Zerbe studied chemistry in 1920 at the Technische Hochschule in Friedberg, Germany.

From 1921 until 1923 he lived in Munich, where he studied painting at the Debschitz School, mainly under Josef Eberz. From 1924 until 1926 Zerbe worked and traveled in Italy on a fellowship from the City of Munich.^[3] 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 "Degenerate art."

From 1937 until 1955, Zerbe was the head of the Department of Painting, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.^[4]

In 1939 Zerbe became a U.S. citizen and the same year for the first time he used encaustic. He joined the faculty in the Department of Art and Art History at Florida State University in 1955, where he taught until his death.

He was grouped together with the Boston artists Kahlil Gibran (sculptor), Jack Levine and Hyman Bloom as a key member of the Boston Expressionist school of painting,^[5] and through his teaching influenced a generation of painters,^{[6] [7]} including, among others, David Aronson, Bernard Chaet, Reed Kay, Arthur Polonsky, Jack Kramer, Barbara Swan, Andrew Kooistra, and Lois Tarlow.^[8]

His works are thought significant because they record "the response of a distinguished artist of basically European sensibility to the physical and cultural scene of the New World".

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, Massachusetts
• 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937: Marie Sterner Galleries, New York City
• 1936, 1938, 1939, 1940: Grace Horne Galleries, Boston, Massachusetts
• 1941: Vose Galleries, Boston; Buchholz Gallery, New York City
• 1943: Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts
• 1943, 1946, 1948, 1951, 1952: The Downtown Gallery, New York City
• 1943, 1947: Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts
• 1945, 1946: Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois
• 1946: Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan
• 1948, 1949: Philadelphia Art Alliance, Pennsylvania
• 1948, 1955: Boris Mirski Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
• 1950: Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, New York
• 1951-1952: Retrospective Exhibition circulated by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, traveled to: Baltimore Museum of Art; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center; Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire; Florida Gulf Coast Art Center, Clearwater; M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts;
• 1954: The Allan Gallery, New York City
• 1958: Florida State University, Tallahassee; Ringling Brothers Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida
• 1958, 1959, 1960: Nordness Gallery, New York City
• 1960: New Arts Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia
• 1961-1962: Retrospective Exhibition circulated by The American Federation of Arts, Boston University

Work in public collections

Zerbe's work is in various public collections, including:

See also

• Art movement
• Art periods
• Expressionism

Further reading

• Ulrich Thieme; Felix Becker, ed., Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, V 36, Leipzig, 1947, p. 463.
• Frederick S. Wight, Milestones of American Painting in our century, (New York : Chanticleer Press [for the] Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1949.) OCLC 154058045 p. 25, 124, 125.
• Sheldon Cheney, The story of modern art (New York, Viking Press, 1958.) OCLC 685440
• Alan D. Gruskin, Painting in the U.S.A. (Garden City, New York, Doubleday & Co., 1946.) OCLC 1220327 p. 85.
• Philips Collection, The Phillips Collection : a museum of modern art and its sources : catalogue : Washington (New York : Thames and Hudson, 1952.) OCLC 18027945 p. 139, 230.
• Lee Nordness ed., text by Allen Stuart Weller, Art: USA: now (New York, Viking Press, 1963.) OCLC 265650 p. 126-129.
• Edgar Preston Richardson, Painting in America, from 1502 to the present (New York, Crowell, 1965.) OCLC 517571 p. 405. 406.
• Bram Dijkstra, American expressionism: art and social change, 1920-1950, (New York : H.N. Abrams, in association with the Columbus Museum of Art, 2003.)
• Judith Bookbinder, Boston modern: figurative expressionism as alternative modernism, (Durham, N.H. : University of New Hampshire Press ; Hanover : University Press of New England, ©2005.)
• Allgemeine Künstler Lexikon Bio-Bibliographische Index, Band 10, page 727
• Marika Herskovic, American Abstract and Figurative Expressionism: Style Is Timely Art Is Timeless (New York School Press, 2009.) . p. 248-251
• ART USA NOW Ed. by Lee Nordness;Vol.1, (The Viking Press, Inc., 1963.) pp. 126–129
• Elke Lauterbach: Sieben Münchner Maler: Eine Ausstellungsgemeinschaft in der Zeit von 1931–1937. München 1999. (= Schriften aus dem Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität München, Bd. 70.)
• Günther Graßmann, Malerei und Graphik. Ausstellung zum 85. Geburtstag. Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, Ausstellung und Katalog in Zusammenarbeit mit Professor Günther Graßmann, Dr. Inge Feuchtmayr, Marie Stelzer, Garching 1985.

External links

• Karl Zerbe Paintings in Museums and Public Art Galleries from artcyclopedia.com
• Figureworks.com/20th Century work at www.figureworks.com
• Elke Lauterbach: Sieben Münchner Maler: Eine Ausstellungsgemeinschaft in der Zeit von 1931-1937 - Inhaltsverzeichnis und Einleitung 7 Münchner Maler
• ARTnews . 46 . 10 . December 1947 . Zerbe in 1947 photo of eleven Massachusetts painters . (Photographer: John Brook)

Notes and References

1. Book: April 25, 1961. Karl Zerbe. 1095748. Open WorldCat.
2. Web site: 2010. Karl Zerbe papers. 2021-02-23. Smithsonian Online Visual Archive (SOVA), Smithsonian Institution. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
3. Elke Lauterbach: Sieben Münchner Maler: Eine Ausstellungsgemeinschaft in der Zeit von 1931-1937 - Inhaltsverzeichnis und Einleitung http://www.utzverlag.de/shop.php?bn=47567
4. Web site: Goodhue. Laura. Creative Expression: An Imminent Clash as Experienced by Three Artists. eScholarship@BC. Boston College. 47–48. 2005. 2015-04-10. https://web.archive.org/web/20150410135704/http://dlib.bc.edu/islandora/object/bc-ir:102821/datastream/PDF/view. 2015-04-10. live.
5. Web site: Waxing Poetic: Encaustic Art in America during the Twentieth Century, Karl Zerbe . 2006-12-06 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150429104824/http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa626.htm . 2015-04-29 . live .
6. News: McQuaid. Cate. Boston Expressionists get their due. The Boston Globe. 27 December 2011. Another key player was Karl Zerbe...Zerbe taught a generation of artists at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.. 21 June 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20170731202245/https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2011/12/27/boston-expressionists-get-their-due/qeNBQGq5xBSZeSoJLwnCGN/story.html. 31 July 2017. live.
7. Chaet. Bernard. The Boston Expressionist School: A Painter's Recollections of the Forties. Archives of American Art Journal. 1980. 20. 1. 29. 1557495. The Smithsonian Institution. 10.1086/aaa.20.1.1557495. 192821072. In 1963, James Johnson Sweeney, speaking on 'Art Education in the United States,' cited two great European-born artists as the most important influences on American painting of the preceding twenty-five years - Hans Hofmann and Karl Zerbe..
8. Book: Bookbinder. Judith. Boston Modern: Figurative Expressionism as Alternative Modernism. 2005. University of New Hampshire Press. Durham, NH. 9781584654889. 5. 2015-04-23. https://web.archive.org/web/20160515045133/https://books.google.com/books?id=r47Hc8Ai7lEC&pg=PA5. 2016-05-15. live.