Chaim Gross Original Vintage Ukrainian American WPA Art Students League NY Graphite Drawing Watercolor Abstract Expressionist Art Painting

Original, vintage Ukrainian American abstract expressionist graphite drawing with watercolor painting of a mother and child, by Chaim Gross.

    Chaim Gross, (March 17, 1904 – May 5, 1991), was an American expressionist painter, sculptor, and educator.
    Chaim Gross arrived in the United States in 1921 at the age of only seventeen, but he was mature far beyond his years and had long since determined on his goal to become an artist. Behind him were years of homelessness, struggle, and deprivation. The outbreak of World War I had turned his native Galicia into a constantly turbulent battleground for the Austrian and Russian armies. Brutal attacks by Russian Cossacks on the Jewish population which in one instance nearly resulted in the deaths of his parents forced Chaim's family to join the countless refugees who fled their homes. Separated from his parents for long periods, pressed into labor by the Austrian army, young Chaim had learned to survive on his own.
    In spite of hardships and enforced wanderings, an early interest in drawing had continued to grow, but circumstances, even after the end of the war, offered little opportunity for formal study. Finally, with the aid of his brother, the poet Naftoli, who had left for America in 1914, Chaim and another brother were able to reach New York City. Once there, Chaim soon enrolled in evening classes at the Educational Alliance Art School while working during the day as a delivery boy for a grocery store. It was at the school that another student, Leo Jackinson perceived that Gross's drawings revealed a strong grasp of three-dimensional structure and persuaded him to try sculpture. "It was an invaluable suggestion," said Gross, "for I soon realized that sculpture was the form of creative work that truly appealed to me."*
    Between 1922 and 1926, Gross studied sculpture and painting at the Beaux- Arts Institute of Design, again taking late afternoon and evening classes and working during the day. His final studies --two months with Robert Laurent at the Art Students League were in 1927, for Gross had decided that it was time, as he said, "to break away and start carving by myself, since my ideas went beyond the traditional training and I felt it was time for me to try them. So I settled in an attic studio on 14th Street in New York." The next years would not be easy, but he was strong, vigorous, and blessed with humor and a joyous, resilient outlook.
    During those difficult years, Gross continued to refine and perfect his carving techniques. These were skills that were not stressed in traditional academic courses, for it was a period when much sculpture was done in clay as models for craftsmen to carve in marble. Gross belongs to a small, important group of American sculptors, such as Robert Laurent, John B. Flannagan, Heinz Warneke, Jose de Creeft, and William Zorach, who broke with tradition in the early decades of the century and turned to working personally and directly with natural materials, such as stone and wood. Although he has worked in stone with distinction, it is wood that has held the greatest appeal for Gross, a love that he says reaches back to his early childhood when his father was a lumber merchant in the extensive forests of the Carpathian Mountains. As a student, he found in the lumberyards of New York unusual woods from all over the world that had not been used previously for sculpture, but which for Gross offered exciting possibilities in their range of color and rich grains. The hard density of these woods such as lignum vitae, ebony, and snakewood provoked a strong physical response in Gross.
    Whatever his choice of medium---wood or stone or bronze, pencil or watercolor---the art of Chaim Gross has always been charged with a compelling sense of life. We respond with pleasure to his delight in the physical exuberance of acrobats or the loving play between mother and child. His language is form, movement, and color, but it speaks eloquently for life, joy, and the wamth of human sentiment.
Ref:
---Janet A. Flint
Curator of Prints and Drawings,
National Collection of Fine Arts, 1974

Chaim Gross
(1904-1991)
Graphite Drawing and Watercolor on Paper
Signed lower right
Estimated age at approximately 1955-1960
Painting's measurements, (showing from behind the mat), are approximately 13" X 10"
In frame, painting measures approximately 14.2" X 17.4"
Painting is in very good to excellent original condition; and is protected by glass. There are a few minor flecks of dust, between the frame, and the painting. Frame is vintage, and is also in excellent original condition. Please review all images.

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