If you have a Marzuki art piece – here’s the good news/bad
news :
The bad news is, my dad created for 30 years largely
undiscovered; so there are no ebay windfalls in the offing. The good news is, you
have a visionary, iconic mid-century piece that some of my friends and
relations would mug you in a dark alley to get their hands on.
BIO INFO
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| Jim Marzuki, 1985 |
Jim Marzuki was born in Aurora, Illinois in 1925, the son of
staunch Catholic Italian immigrants from Reggio Emeila; the real family name is
Marzucchi.
After he and his buddies graduated from Aurora West they
volunteered for duty in WWII. Dad ended up in the Navy, stateside in Pensacola,
Florida for the duration. As he told me once, “They asked us, `do you want
combat or do you want to go into a training program?’ Then they shipped you to
whichever you didn’t pick.”
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| Self Portrait, 1960 |
My
father was trained as a dental assistant, and sent jewelry he made from dental
gold to his girlfriend (my one-day mother) and his mother. He did dental work
on the enlisted, and maybe even some corpse identification, but he never talked
about that. In 1948, he married my
Mom (Mary Lou Penzenstadler) and thanks to the GI Bill, he trained as an art
teacher at Western Illinois University, then got his Masters at the University
of New Mexico. It was in Albuquerque that he absorbed the styles of both Native
American and Mexican cultures,
particularly their spiritual and religious art, that would color his own
work. My Mom wanted to stay in New Mexico, but my dad’s only job offer there was at a
Catholic school, and he did not want to “work for nuns.”
So in the
mid-1950s, they moved back to Illinois, renting briefly in Chicago,
where Dad formed the short-lived Gallery Christo with some other Catholic
artists, displaying religious and spiritual work. Then, between 1956-58 my parents moved into a new WWII vet planned community
called Park Forest, first renting in the co-ops, then buying their first (and last) "starter" home. This is where my dad would teach industrial arts (shop) and fine
arts (and coach football) at what was then Rich High School. (Now known as Rich
East). During the 1960s, Rich had four or five art teachers, all with a different specialty (painting, sculpture, ceramics).
It was truly a different time.
Park Forest history links: (Two of dad's works are in the PF House Museum, see side links)
For most of his life, (most definitely during the Kennedy
era, but most definitely not during the child abuse priest scandals that came
to light in the '90s), my father was a devout Catholic. He designed and built the
7-foot Spanish-influenced crucifix for St. Mary’s church in Park Forest out of
welded and painted steel around
1960.
Facebook link on St. Mary's history:
The metal corpus was unceremoniously yanked off its cross in
the ‘80s and replaced with generic, mass produced, (and less ethnic looking) “sacred art” by the Catholic powers-that-be (little wonder I’m an agnostic.)
The wooden cross was still in use for a few more years. The pieces were eventually
recovered by my family,
reunited, and repaired. A few years ago, a friend and I drove it to the University of New Mexico (strapped to the roof of my Hyundai) where the
restored crucifix is now on display in the Newman Catholic student center.
Road trip w/ Jesus to AZ:
Throughout the late 1950s, ‘60s, and early ‘70s, my
dad taught and worked as an artist. He exhibited at Chicago area art fairs and
was active at the Art Institute of Chicago, selling his work through their
rental and sales gallery. In the early 1960s, he founded an art center modeled on that gallery in
Park Forest, and soon spun off the Park Forest Art Fair, at one time one the
finest juried art fairs in the Midwest, now part of the Tall Grass Arts Association.
Tall Grass link:
My dad used the high school’s welding gear and their shop saws to make his wood and metal sculptures. He also made small ceramic pieces in a dangerous-looking home
kiln the size of a dorm room refrigerator. He painted first in oils, then in
acrylics, and also continued making jewelry and prints. He was influenced by Picasso,
Giacometti, the circle of 1960s Art
Institute artists, and many others
working out of New York and Chicago.
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| Sketchbook Oil crayon 1962 |
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| Pre-Columbian dude in familiar pose. |
Dad loved ethnographic art; one family vacation was spent driving to Alaska in a van
when the Alaskan highway was still gravel, to see nature and collect Inuit art. He would walk the halls
of the Field Museum all day; he collected masks from around the world, pre-Columbian
art, and native American art, especially kachinas, a passion that started in
his days in New Mexico. He also collected
the work of contemporary American print makers (Ynez Johnston, still living, was one
of his favorites), amassing far more than he could ever display.
Link to Ynez Johnston's work:
http://www.tobeycmossgallery.com/ynez_johnston_retrospective.html
His own work evolved over the years, but was always unique; his
paintings started out in the 1950s as Picassoesque, with a bit of New Yorker influence.
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| Nocturne 1951 |
|
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| Large painting, 1963, courtesy Barry Rice Designs |
In the 1960s, his paintings became more abstract: landscapes, figures and images
devolved into shapes and colors, defined and "punched out" by thick black lines evocative of pen and ink.
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| 1960s abstract |
His wood sculptures were three dimensional versions of the these intertwined forms, while his metal figures tended to be elongated, usually human figures, either completely abstracted or
hyper-detailed, often with portions of the internal anatomy transposed
onto the outer skin.
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| Untitled (Rear) 1964 |
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| The Group, date unknown, courtesy Roger |
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| Floating Figure, date unknown |
He loved to carve
and weld figures of women, usually depicting them as a symbol of fertility and
power. As an artist, my father was unique in that he worked in all
media. He often painted his wood or fired his
ceramic sculpture with a blue/black acrylic wash to make it look like
the welded steel sculptures he made; his metal sculptures were also painted and
detailed with acrylics, and he always made the wood frames for his paintings by
hand. He frequently translated the same image or idea into several different techniques: a painting, a sculpture, a carving, a print. He would pursue a series or theme
(Icarus, mythological warriors, women with birds, cityscapes) in endless
variations.
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| Edward Hicks. Peaceable Kingdom |
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| Steig's Lonely Ones |
He was intrigued by the idea of variation and diversity; he felt
diversity of species was proof of both evolution and God’s existence. He was
influenced by the common themes that ran through both ancient and pop art,
everything from contemporary
cartoonist William Steig to Edward Hicks, the painter of the “Peaceable
Kingdom” series at the turn of the century. He loved E.E. Cummings and the 19
th
century poet William Cullen Bryant,
who once wrote, “
To him in the love of Nature holds / communion with her visibile forms / She
speaks a various language.”
His own output was fairly extensive, at one point filling
our garage. I inherited quite a collection when he died along with photographs
he took of the many pieces he sold. He sold more metal sculptures than anything
else; his second most popular pieces were the wood/paint/metal and found object
mixed media pieces, most from a series called “New City” (variations were
delineated by one word : “New City Pepsi” / “New City Eleven,” etc). These
works were abstracted cityscapes, dominated by pop art advertising
petroglyphs (another ancient art form with which he was obsessed.) The people
in these pieces were tiny metal figures inserted into the crevices of sentient, evolving and decaying
landscapes.
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| New City Eat |
By he mid-1970s, he had stopped exhibiting, as he became
more and more involved in local (Democratic) politics and environmental
activism. He led the battle to preserve open spaces south of the city,
including the Thorn Creek Nature Preserve, which was founded, in large part,
thanks to the efforts of my parents. He retired from teaching early in 1980,
using as an excuse a spinal injury he incurred playing softball that left him
with a limp. But he only became busier: running for the state legislature (won
one; lost one); rehabbing an 1800s church into a Nature center, and single-handedly holding the art
center and art fair together as the planned community that had once been a
blueprint for modern living instead became a symbol of economic blight.
He was prone to introspection that could make him appear, to some, aloof or taciturn. If provoked, he could be blunt, even fearsome. But to his friends, he was endlessly
loyal, intellectually curious, surprising in his sense of humor and
subliminal joie de vie. He never stopped mentoring, supporting
and collecting other artists, often taking time to help them design a logo, or apply at galleries, even taking slides of their work for juried fairs. He once staged a one-man exhibition in Park
Forest for a young Chicago sculptor, a friend of mine, who was just
starting out and had nothing on his resume.
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| Wood, metal, mixed media sculptures in this grouping |
His own body of work remained stored in the garage, where I am ashamed
to admit it seemed so plentiful that in high school I sometimes snuck
pieces out and gave them away as gifts to people I no longer even know.
When Dad died, I got his pieces out and realized they were vastly
superior in design, execution and vision to works by far more acclaimed
artists of the era (or present, for that matter.) My friends dug the
mid-century vibe, but (I hope) learned to appreciate his work on more
than a kitsch/vintage level, as I did. My Dad died in 2000 after a
miserable year disabled by a stroke during which he couldn't draw a
line, which pissed him off immensely. After he died, the Park Forest
gallery he founded put on an exhibit of his work, spanning more than 30
years, for the first and last time. He is missed.
Chicago Tribune obit link:
Triangle vehicle (left) was bought by Helen Johnson of Park Forest at the Park Forest Art Center gallery in the 1970s; She was nice enough to send me a picture. It's similar to a "bird vehicle" that was gifted to John and Judy Mendelson of Park Forest (not shown).
I found another slide of this hobby horse one...It's actually called "Broken rocking horse" Not sure if that's a title or if the piece was broken. It is a black steel hobby horse with a golden child sitting atop it with a flag.
