Zerbe was born on September 16, 1903, in Berlin, Germany. The family lived in Paris, France, from 1904 to 1914, where his father was an executive in an electrical supply concern. In 1914 they moved to Frankfurt, Germany where they lived until 1920. Zerbe studied chemistry in 1920 at the Technische Hochschule in Friedberg, Germany.
From 1921 until 1923 he lived in Munich, where he studied painting at the Debschitz School, mainly under Josef Eberz. From 1924 until 1926 Zerbe worked and traveled in Italy on a fellowship from the City of Munich.[3] In 1932 his oil painting titled, ‘’Herbstgarten’’ (autumnal garden), of 1929, was acquired by the National-Galerie, Berlin; in 1937, the painting was destroyed by the Nazis as "Degenerate art."
In 1939 Zerbe became a U.S. citizen and the same year for the first time he used encaustic. He joined the faculty in the Department of Art and Art History at Florida State University in 1955, where he taught until his death.
His works are thought significant because they record "the response of a distinguished artist of basically European sensibility to the physical and cultural scene of the New World".[1]
^ a bKarl Zerbe. April 25, 1961. OCLC 1095748 – via Open WorldCat.
^ a b"Karl Zerbe papers". Smithsonian Online Visual Archive (SOVA), Smithsonian Institution. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. 2010. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
^Elke Lauterbach: Sieben Münchner Maler: Eine Ausstellungsgemeinschaft in der Zeit von 1931-1937 - Inhaltsverzeichnis und Einleitung [1] Archived 2014-01-02 at the Wayback Machine
^Goodhue, Laura (2005). "Creative Expression: An Imminent Clash as Experienced by Three Artists". eScholarship@BC. Boston College. pp. 47–48. Archived from the original on 2015-04-10. Retrieved 2015-04-10.
^"Waxing Poetic: Encaustic Art in America during the Twentieth Century, Karl Zerbe". Archived from the original on 2015-04-29. Retrieved 2006-12-06.
^McQuaid, Cate (27 December 2011). "Boston Expressionists get their due". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on 31 July 2017. Retrieved 21 June 2017. Another key player was Karl Zerbe...Zerbe taught a generation of artists at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.
^Chaet, Bernard (1980). "The Boston Expressionist School: A Painter's Recollections of the Forties". Archives of American Art Journal. 20 (1). The Smithsonian Institution: 29. doi:10.1086/aaa.20.1.1557495. JSTOR 1557495. S2CID 192821072. In 1963, James Johnson Sweeney, speaking on 'Art Education in the United States,' cited two great European-born artists as the most important influences on American painting of the preceding twenty-five years—Hans Hofmann and Karl Zerbe.
^Bookbinder, Judith (2005). Boston Modern: Figurative Expressionism as Alternative Modernism. Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire Press. p. 5. ISBN 9781584654889. Archived from the original on 2016-05-15. Retrieved 2015-04-23.
^"Harvard Art Museums". www.harvardartmuseums.org.
^"Karl Zerbe | Kemper Art Museum". www.kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu.
^"Disorder". collections.mfa.org.
^"Karl Zerbe | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art.
^"Artist Info". www.nga.gov.
^"Karl Zerbe". walkerart.org.
^"Karl Zerbe | Dark Cardinal". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
Further reading
Ulrich Thieme; Felix Becker, ed., Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, V 36, Leipzig, 1947, p. 463.
Frederick S. Wight, Milestones of American Painting in our century, (New York : Chanticleer Press [for the] Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1949.) OCLC 154058045 p. 25, 124, 125.
Sheldon Cheney, The story of modern art (New York, Viking Press, 1958.) OCLC 685440
Alan D. Gruskin, Painting in the U.S.A. (Garden City, New York, Doubleday & Co., 1946.) OCLC 1220327 p. 85.
Philips Collection, The Phillips Collection : a museum of modern art and its sources : catalogue : Washington (New York : Thames and Hudson, 1952.) OCLC 18027945 p. 139, 230.
Lee Nordness ed., text by Allen Stuart Weller, Art: USA: now (New York, Viking Press, 1963.) OCLC 265650 p. 126-129.
Edgar Preston Richardson, Painting in America, from 1502 to the present (New York, Crowell, 1965.) OCLC 517571 p. 405. 406.
Bram Dijkstra, American expressionism: art and social change, 1920-1950, (New York : H.N. Abrams, in association with the Columbus Museum of Art, 2003.) ISBN 0-8109-4231-3
Allgemeine Künstler Lexikon Bio-Bibliographische Index, Band 10, page 727
Marika Herskovic, American Abstract and Figurative Expressionism: Style Is Timely Art Is Timeless (New York School Press, 2009.) ISBN 978-0-9677994-2-1. p. 248-251
ART USA NOW Ed. by Lee Nordness;Vol.1, (The Viking Press, Inc., 1963.) pp. 126–129
Elke Lauterbach: Sieben Münchner Maler: Eine Ausstellungsgemeinschaft in der Zeit von 1931–1937. München 1999. (= Schriften aus dem Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität München, Bd. 70.)
Günther Graßmann, Malerei und Graphik. Ausstellung zum 85. Geburtstag. Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, Ausstellung und Katalog in Zusammenarbeit mit Professor Günther Graßmann, Dr. Inge Feuchtmayr, Marie Stelzer, Garching 1985.
External links
Karl Zerbe Paintings in Museums and Public Art Galleries from artcyclopedia.com
Figureworks.com/20th Century work at www.figureworks.com
Elke Lauterbach: Sieben Münchner Maler: Eine Ausstellungsgemeinschaft in der Zeit von 1931-1937 - Inhaltsverzeichnis und Einleitung 7 Münchner Maler
"Zerbe in 1947 photo of eleven Massachusetts painters". ARTnews. 46 (10). December 1947. (Photographer: John Brook)