Artwork Details
- Title
- My Home in Fresno around the Year 1900
- Artist
- Date
- 1949
- Location
- Dimensions
- 23 1⁄4 × 32 1⁄4 in. (59.1 × 81.9 cm) framed: 29 1⁄4 × 38 1⁄4 in. (74.3 × 97.2 cm)
- Credit Line
- Gift from the Collection of Tessim Zorach
- Mediums Description
- wool embroidered on linen
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Figure group
- Landscape — California — Fresno
- Architecture Exterior — domestic — house
- Object Number
- 1970.65.12
Artwork Description
These works are built out of my life and the things that have touched my life.
--Marguerite Zorach
Marguerite Zorach's "pictures in wool" are bold and vibrant explorations of color that often incorporate imagery from her own life. My Home in Fresno around the Year 1900 is a portrait of the artist's childhood. In a 1956 essay she described planning this work, to include "a large white gingerbread house, light and airy and delightful in stitches; the magnolia trees and palms, fences and flowers; [and] children at night playing hide and seek under the street lamp."
Following the birth of her two children, Zorach turned to embroidery to adapt to the realities of juggling both her household and her work as an artist. Painting required periods of uninterrupted time, but with fiber she could pick up and put down the work as needed, as well as visualize and plan a composition while accomplishing other tasks.