JAN ZACH
The Karin Clarke Gallery is honored to host the works of reknowned sculptor and artist Jan Zach.
Zach was born in Czechoslovakia in 1914, on the eve of the First World War. During the 1930’s, he trained in Prague to become a painter and decorator. He came to New York in 1938 to work on the Czech pavillion for the World’s Fair, and never returned to his homeland, due to the invasion of the Nazis in 1939, and the ensuing Communist takeover in 1948. Jan lived in various places, including Rio de Janiero and the countryside of Brazil, Victoria, British Columbia, eventually settling in Eugene in 1958 when the University of Oregon hired him as a professor of sculpture. He passed away in 1986, having retired seven years earlier from the University.
Zach’s passion for art, for thinking and living large, and his perspective as a world citizen allowed him to make significant contributions as an artist, teacher, and mentor. He left an impressive body of work, and spawned inspiration in the lives of innumerable students and fellow artists. Tommy Griffin, who studied under Zach in the graduate sculpture program at the UO, recalls showing Zach a small clay maquette for an eight-foot sculpture he was planning. “Jan held...it up to the light, studied it, and said ‘Fantastic! But why not eighty feet tall?’”
The natural world inspired most of Zach’s work, which became an ongoing expression of the freedom he valued so deeply. His well known sculpture, Prometheus, located outside the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, portays the agony endured, even by a god, who, after trying to help humanity faced the oppression of Zeus .
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