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for Max Kalish
1891 - 1945
Kalish's father established a cigar manufacturing business in Cleveland, Ohio, when Kalish was a child. Kalish attended Cleveland public school, and, from 1906 to 1910, the Cleveland School of Art. He was in New York enrolled in the Academy's school for the year 1910-11, before going to Paris, where he studied at the Colarossi Academy and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, 1912-13. From 1913 to its opening in 1915 Kalish was on the sculpture staff of the Panama Pacific Exposition, San Franciso. The two years, 1916 to 1919 were passed in the army.
In the early 1920s Kalish began a series of sculptures representing the beauty and heroicism of the American laborer. Included were the steelworker, locomotive engineer, logger, driller, riveter, stoker, telephone linesman, digger, and woodsman. However, in the next decade Kalish turned to softer themes, working in marble on such traditional subjects as infants and nudes.
In 1934 he began a series of depictions of outstanding Americans in the fields of arts, medicine, religion, and politics. He returned to this kind of conception in 1944 when the Smithsonian Institution commissioned forty-eight statuettes of Americans who gave notable public service during World War II.
As early as 1921, Kalish established a pattern of dividing his time between Europe and America; he maintained studios in both Paris and Cleveland until to 1932, when he relocated his American base to New York and curtailed his Paris visits. In 1939 he moved to a home he had built in Great Neck, New York. Kalish was largely responsible for the founding of the Great Neck Art Association.
In the early 1920s Kalish began a series of sculptures representing the beauty and heroicism of the American laborer. Included were the steelworker, locomotive engineer, logger, driller, riveter, stoker, telephone linesman, digger, and woodsman. However, in the next decade Kalish turned to softer themes, working in marble on such traditional subjects as infants and nudes.
In 1934 he began a series of depictions of outstanding Americans in the fields of arts, medicine, religion, and politics. He returned to this kind of conception in 1944 when the Smithsonian Institution commissioned forty-eight statuettes of Americans who gave notable public service during World War II.
As early as 1921, Kalish established a pattern of dividing his time between Europe and America; he maintained studios in both Paris and Cleveland until to 1932, when he relocated his American base to New York and curtailed his Paris visits. In 1939 he moved to a home he had built in Great Neck, New York. Kalish was largely responsible for the founding of the Great Neck Art Association.
