Jacques Zucker

December 2, 2015 - February 3, 2016

- PRESS RELEASE -

“Jacques Zucker Rediscovered” will spotlight acclaimed  American artist Jacques Zucker's signature post-impressionistic romantic oil paintings, including portraits, still-lives, town and landscapes, done on his many travels around the world.  This body of work will as well include a rare self portrait painting completed in the late 1920's when Jacques Zucker met Chaim Soutine and Modigliani in France.

Zucker's post-impressionistic paintings can best be described as both gentle and vehement. There is a quiet order in the composed works, yet Zucker's brush strokes suggest a more abrupt passion. This passion is seen in the deep colours executed with much texture and prominence. The sumptuous tonalities of purples, mauves, oranges and joyful yellows create a dramatic aesthetic look; vibrating and exploding in many unsuspecting ways as they eventually tone down gradually into an understatement of grays, called by Degas "dead tones."  Zucker was a very intense painter, he worked rapidly, drawing with brush and color directly on to the canvas. The works on display are from various time periods of Zucker's life, leaving us with impressions from different areas of his life work. 

Jacques Zucker was driven by his ultimate passion, his love for nature, painting works which were never staged and always with in the moment of inspiration. His artwork creates a dramatic, sentimental, and delicate voice with great attention to his own style. It was in the 1920’s when he painted along side Soutine, Pascin, Zadkine, Chagall, Kremegne, Volovick, and Indenbaum, all of them still unknown and poor at the time sharing similar interests of their hopes and their beliefs. Zucker emerged from this circle to create his own style and path; it has been said that his paintings convey and play upon warmth and affection, as opposed to vulgarity and sadness as so many of these artists did at the time. 

The result of his lifetime work is astonishing; his unique styles of impressionistic subjects are rich with life, color and enthusiasm. His ultimate passion to paint with his heart and not for the aim of “success” is truly felt in every single painting. Jacques Zucker has left us with an incredible body of work now residing in Museums and collections around the world.