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Peasants and Melons
TURZAK, Charles
Color woodcut printed on thin laid Japanese paper, 1930.Edition of 100.Signed, titled, and numbered in pencil.
Charles TURZAK
Charles Turzak (1899-1986) was born in a coal town not too far from Chicago, in Illinois. His father, an immigrant miner from Czechoslovakia, had envisioned a professional career for his son. When young Charles won a cartoon contest sponsored by The Purina Company, upon his graduation from high school in 1920, it led him to the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Turzak paid his way through art education, and his early talent for drawing and wood carving turned his attention to the creation of woodcuts.
Immediately upon graduating, Charles Turzak started to make a living as a printmaker. He created woodcuts both of illustrational purposes and as fine arts objects. He seemed to do well enough to travel extensively through Europe in 1929, and to marry upon his return, despite the depression.
The rapidly developing city of Chicago was overwhelming his artistic muse in these early years. While landmarks of the city define his oeuvre in large part, history, social commentary, figures, and landscapes also increasingly became a part of it.
Today mostly remembered for his strong modernist line of the 1920s and 1930s, his abstract compositions, created from the 1950s onward, also deserve attention. Turzak managed to make a living for himself and his family as an artist, through the depression era, World War II and beyond. He is today regarded as one of the great independent early modernist printmakers in the Unites States.
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The Question
TURZAK, Charles
Woodcut printed in black ink on thin laid Japanese paper, 1934 or 1935. From a series of 10 woodcuts titled A History of Illinois in Woodcuts. Edit...
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Methodist Temple, Chicago
TURZAK, Charles
Woodcut printed in black ink on thin laid Japanese paper, circa 1929-31.Reference: Turzak 22.Edition of 50.Signed, titled and numbered in pencil.
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Adler Planetarium Chicago
TURZAK, Charles
Woodcut printed in black ink on thin laid Japanese paper.Reference: Turzak 22.Edition of circa 50 or less.Signed and titled in pencil.