Marguerite Thompson Zorach

born Santa Rosa, California, 1887; died Brooklyn, New York, 1968

BiographyMarguerite Zorach was a painter, weaver, and graphic artist. Along with her husband, sculptor William Zorach, she was an innovator in the modernist movement in the United States. She was an early exponent of modernism in America, employing the bold colors of the Fauves (a group of radical French painters) with the striking, and controversial, forms of cubism. An acquaintance of Pablo Picasso and the expatriate Gertrude Stein, she attended La Palette, a school of “post-impressionists,” and exhibited at the Salon d’Automne and the Société des Artistes Indépendants.

She married William in 1912, returned to the United States. They purchased a farm near Stonington, Maine. Marguerite continued to paint, but she also turned her attention to fiber art in the form of embroidery and batik.

[source: Smithsonian American Art Museum]

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