Karl Zerbe

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Karl Zerbe
Born	September 16, 1903 Berlin, Germany
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]

1 Biography
2 Solo Exhibitions
3 Work in Public Collections
4 References
5 Books
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] 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 the Department of Painting, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In 1939 Karl Zerbe became a 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. Karl Zerbe

[edit] 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.

[edit] Work in Public Collections

The Addison Gallery of American Art - Andover, MA
Albright-Knox Art Gallery - Buffalo, NY
Art Institute of Chicago – Chicago, IL
New Britain Museum of American Art - New Britain, CT
Auburn University - Auburn, AL
Baltimore Museum of Art – Baltimore, MD
Birmingham Museum of Art - Birmingham, AL
Brooklyn Museum - New York City, NY
Butler Institute of American Art - Youngstown, OH
Saint Louis Art Museum - Saint Louis, MI
Colby College Museum of Art - Waterville, ME
Cranbrook Academy of Art - Bloomfield Hills, MI
Detroit Institute of Arts – Detroit, MI
Encyclopedia Britannica Collection
Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University - Cambridge, MA
Armon Carter Museum - Fort Worth, TX
Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard University - Cambridge, MA
Herron School of Art – Indianapolis, IN
Kestner Museum – Hannover, Germany
Los Angeles County Museum of Art – Los Angeles, CA
Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Cambridge, MA
Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York City, NY
Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute - Utica, NY
Rhode Island School of Design Museum - Providence RI
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - Boston, MA
Museum of Modern Art - New York City, NY
Nationalgaleri, Berlin, Germany (destroyed)
National Institute of Arts and Letters - New York City, NY
Newark Museum - Newark, NJ
Oberlin College - Oberlin, OH
Philadelphia Museum of Art – Philadelphia, PA
The Phillips Collection - Washington, D.C.
Sarah Lawrence College - Yonkers, NY
Smith College Museum of Art - Northampton, MA
Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, Germany
Staedelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, Germany
University of Iowa - Iowa City, IA,
Syracuse University - Syracuse, NY
Tel-Aviv Museum, Israel
University of Georgia - Athens, GA
University of Illinois
University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, MN
Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma - Oklahoma City, OK
University of Rochester Memorial Art Gallery - Rochester, NY
Walker Art Center - Minneapolis, MN
Whitney Museum of American Art - New York City, NY
Wichita Art Museum, The Roland P. Murdock Collection - Wichita, KS

[edit] References

^ Karl Zerbe by H.W. Janson, American Federation of Arts, New York

Smithsonian Institution Research Information System; Archival, Manuscript and Photographic Collections, Karl Zerbe

[edit] Books

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.) 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
Allgemeine Künstler Lexikon Bio-Bibliographische Index, Band 10, page 727