Joseph Irwin Zucker was born in Chicago. He received a B.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1964 and an M.F.A., from the same institution in 1966.
His art was quirky and idiosyncratic, and most often relates to the materials he used, such as cotton and plastic. In the 1970s, Zucker experimented with what became his signature technique: gluing cotton balls to canvas in a gridded arrangement and painting over them. Resulting in a highly textured surface reminiscent of mosaic, this technique radically transformed the surface of the canvas and challenged the “flatness” that critics like Clement Greenberg championed as essential to the discipline of painting.
In his compositions, Zucker constructed simplified geometric renderings of subjects like houses and sailboats, where the subject matter served only as a vehicle for the artist’s exploration of formal qualities. In his series of Box Paintings made in 2004-05, Zucker constructed shallow wooden boxes with various compartments into which he poured a single color of enamel, resulting in flat areas of color that alluded to the ideals of modernist painting.
