CHAIM GROSS

New York: Harry N. Abrams, Publishers, 1974. First Edition. Decorated & gilt-stamped cloth. Very Fine/Very Fine. Chaim Gross. PRESENTATION Copy SIGNED by the Artist with a SKETCH of a Woman, Oblong 4to, maroon cloth with gold lettering on spine and filagree gold medallion on front cover, Mylar-protected photographic dust jacket (unclipped) depicting three sculptures by Gross, 235 pages. Chaim Gross (1904-1991) was born in Ukraine from which his family soon fled the Russians to Hungary. There, briefly, he was able to study art in Budapest before he and his family were expelled during an anti-Jewish purge. Thereafter, he studied in Vienna; then emigrated to the United States in 1921. In New York, he attended the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, where he studied with Elie Nadelman, and at the Art Students League of New York, with Robert Laurent. He also attended the Educational Alliance Art School, studying under Abbo Ostrowsky, at the same time as Moses Soyer. Gross was also close friends and an occasional art-teaching associate of Soyer's twin brother Raphael. In 1926 Gross began a lifetime of teaching at The Educational Alliance. Louise Nevelson was one of his notable students. He was also active in the WPA. Chaim Gross's work encompassed sculpture, linocuts, lithographs, sketches, and wood carvings by the "direct carving" method. He and the Soyers did much to define Jewish and Modern Expressionism based on real life and representational rather than more impressionistic styles. He has been widely exhibited by the Whitney, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn. In 1974, the Smithsonian American Art Museum held the exhibition, Chaim Gross: Sculpture and Drawings, organized by Janet A. Flint, Smithsonian Curator of Prints and Drawings. This volume is an outgrowth of that prestigious exhibition and overview. His SIGNED SKETCH of a full-length (dancing?) woman is suggestive of his studies of women and the circus--now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art--and his famous carving "Acrobatic Performers" (1932).