Artist: Chaim Gross
Navigate: Mother Playing | About the Artist
About Chaim Gross
Chaim Gross, known for his hardwood carvings, figurative sculptures, and graphic work, is also considered one of the pioneers of the direct carving method. Gross carved families, children at play, and the acrobats that came to his small town of Wolowa in the summer. He worked almost exclusively in hardwoods because they reminded him of his father, a lumberjack who whittled small figurines in his spare time.
Gross was born in 1902 to a Jewish family in Austrian Galicia, in the village of Wolowa in the Carpathian Mountains (now part of Poland). After immigrating to New York City in 1921, Gross studied at the Educational Alliance Art School on the Lower East Side. He first began to exhibit his work as a student at the Alliance in 1922, and in the late 1920s, he joined their faculty.
In 1933, Gross joined the government's PWAP (Public Works of Art Project), which transitioned into the WPA (Works Progress Administration). Under these programs, Gross taught and demonstrated art, made sculptures for schools and public colleges, and created works for Federal buildings including the Federal Trade Commission Building, and for the France Overseas and Finnish Buildings at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Gross was also recognized during these years with a silver medal at the 1937 Exposition universelle in Paris.
In the 1950s Gross began to make more bronze sculptures alongside his wood and stone pieces, and in 1957 and 1959 he traveled to Rome to work with famed bronze foundries including the Nicci foundry. In 1959, a survey of Gross's sculpture in wood, stone, and bronze was featured in the exhibit Four American Expressionists curated by Lloyd Goodrich at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
In 1974, art critic Frank Getlein published an Abrams monograph titled Chaim Gross; the Smithsonian American Art Museum held the exhibition, Chaim Gross: Sculpture and Drawings; and the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation was created. In 1977, Gross had three retrospective exhibitions: at the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami, followed by the Montclair Art Museum and the Jewish Museum in New York City. In 1980, art historian Alfred Werner published the major monograph, Chaim Gross: Watercolors and Drawings. In 1984, Gross was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. After Gross died in 1991, Allen Ginsberg gave an important tribute to him at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which is published in their Proceedings.