Dahlov Ipcar: Seven Decades of Creativity

Portland Museum of Art

Portland, Maine

1-207-775-6148 or 1-800-639-4067

http://www.portlandmuseum.org

Dahlov Ipcar: Seven Decades of Creativity

The Portland Museum of Art will present a retrospective exhibition of works by Maine artist Dahlov Ipcar, October 6 through January 27, 2002. This exhibit is being shown in conjunction with an exhibition featuring her parents: Harmonies and Contrasts: The Art of Marguerite and William Zorach.

Ipcar, a resident of Georgetown, Maine, is best known for her colorful, collage-style paintings featuring jungle and farm animals. In addition to being a successful painter, Ipcar's creative versatility is apparent in her three-dimensional cloth sculptures of animals, large murals (many of which are in public buildings), her needlepoint tapestry, and illustrations for more than 30 children' s books, many of which she wrote, as well as writing four novels. (left:

This exhibition will demonstrate the diversity of Ipcar's talents by featuring paintings, soft sculptures, prints, and watercolors. Works will also span her lengthy career ranging from Ice Harvest (1938), an oil painting depicting men and horses struggling to move blocks of ice, to her more recent work, such as Phasianidae (2000) in which a group of colorful birds are perched in the bows of a tree. (left: Phasianidae, 2000, oil on canvas, 40 x 20 inches, Collection of the artist)

Ipcar's talents have earned her wide recognition. Her works are included in the permanent collections of many museums including the Metropolitan Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and the Whitney Museum in New York. Her numerous solo shows include a one-woman show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1939, when she was 21. Ipcar has received the Maine State Award from the Maine Arts Commission, The Deborah Morton Award from Westbrook College, an honorary Doctorate of Humanities from the University of Maine, an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Colby College, a Women of Achievement Award from Westbrook College & Junior League, a Living Legacy Award from the Central Maine Area Agency on Aging, and a Doctorate of Fine Arts from Bates College, among others.

Dahlov Ipcar was born in Windsor, Vermont, November 12, 1917. Her childhood winters were spent in Greenwich Village in an environment of creativity, where she watched her mother, Marguerite Zorach, paint and sew, and her father, William Zorach, sculpt. Ipcar showed artistic ability at an early age and was encouraged by her parents to cultivate it. She spent a short amount of time at Oberlin College, but was disappointed with the art programs offered, and soon left.

Ipcar's love of animals is evident in her artwork. This love is in part due to the summers that she spent with her parents and brother in Maine. In 1923 the Zorach family bought a farm at Robinhood Cove in Georgetown, Maine. It was during a Maine summer that Dahlov met her future husband Adolph Ipcar. They married in September 1936 and after living in New York City for a short time, they moved permanently to Robinhood village, Maine, where they still live today, and Dahlov Ipcar continues to create works of art.

Read more about the Portland Museum of Art in Resource Library Magazine

Please click on thumbnail images bordered by a red line to see enlargements.

For further biographical information on selected artists cited above please see America's Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists.

This page was originally published in Resource Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for more information. rev. 6/7/11

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