Profile of a Woman's Head
Brooklyn Museum photograph
Object Label
Like many modernists, William Zorach embraced a reductive approach to representation, distilling a motif to its essential forms and eliminating unnecessary details. In portraiture, this approach emphasizes the most distinctive aspects of a sitter’s appearance but also reduces the amount of available visual information. This drawing wavers between these competing effects of individualization and generalization. Using assured strokes of the pencil, Zorach delineated the head in a single-line contour—a style that he adopted in the late 1910s and one that emphasizes the two-dimensionality of the image and the picture plane.
Caption
William Zorach American, born Lithuania, 1887–1966. Profile of a Woman's Head, n.d.. Graphite on cream, medium-weight, smooth wove paper, Sheet: 11 7/8 x 8 7/8 in. (30.2 x 22.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift from the collection of Estelle and Jay Sam Unger, 1996.161.3. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 1996.161.3_IMLS_PS4.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Profile of a Woman's Head
Date
n.d.
Medium
Graphite on cream, medium-weight, smooth wove paper
Classification
Dimensions
Sheet: 11 7/8 x 8 7/8 in. (30.2 x 22.5 cm)
Signatures
Signed in graphite, lower left: "William Zorach"
Credit Line
Gift from the collection of Estelle and Jay Sam Unger
Accession Number
1996.161.3
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
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