Baterbys Art Auction Gallery - Bios

Jack Zajac

(1929- ) American artist Jack Zajac was born in Youngstown, Ohio and by 1946. After graduating from high school, Zajac acquired a job at Kaiser Steel Mill, a job that helped finance his attendance in art classes at Scripps College in Claremont, California. By 1948, Zajac had won a scholarship at a California State Fair student exhibition in Sacramento and two years later, in 1950, was named recipient of the Purchase Prize at the Pasadena Art Museum which inevitably led to his first one man exhibit. Known for his sculptures in bronze and marble as well as his figurative paintings, Zajac received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rome Prize and became a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters and The National Academy of Design. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, The Israel Museum (Jerusalem), The Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City), The Pasadena Museum of California Art, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The San Jose Museum of Art, and The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) are among the public collections holding works by Jack Zajac.