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| Newcomb Students, gouache on paper, 1935 Ogden Museum of Southern Art Gift of the artist |
The Ogden Museum is saddened to announce the passing of a talented artist whose work and spirit have played an important role in this institutions history. Jesselyn Benson Zurik passed away on Wednesday, June 20, 2012.
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| Life Study of Teacher, 1936, charcoal on paper Ogden Museum of Southern Art Gift of the artist |
Jesselyn Benson Zurik was born December 26, 1916 in New
Orleans, Louisiana. She attended Lafayette School and the Arts and Crafts
School of New Orleans before enrolling in Isidore Newman School in 1927, where
she graduated in 1934. While at Newman School, she served as Art Editor of the Pioneer from 1931 through 1934. This
early education in the arts prepared her for a lifelong journey through one of
the most influential arts programs in the South and into a professional career
as an illustrator, designer and fine artist.
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| Untitled, 1937, watercolor on paper Ogden Museum of Southern Art Gift of the artist |
In 1934, Zurik enrolled in Newcomb College at Tulane
University, where she received a Bachelor of Design in 1938. She continued her
studies at Newcomb from 1958 to 1960. During her time at Newcomb, Zurik studied
under some of the great arts educators in the South at that time, including
Xavier Gonzales, Will Henry Stevens and Caroline Durieux. Newcomb was a unique
experience in the South of the 1930s. A staff of artists, hand-picked by
William and Ellsworth Woodward, brought to the region a strong influence by the
Munich School, the Pennsylvania Academy and the Rhode Island School of Design. The
pottery studios created not only income for the university, but a legacy of
design, iconic to this day. Will Henry Stevens, in particular, brought to the
school a view of the natural world that was highly influenced by the
Transcendental writers of the American Renaissance.
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| Women with Apples, 1935, gouache on paper Ogden Museum of Southern Art Gift of the artist |
After graduating from Newcomb College, Zurik worked as an illustrator, draftsman and designer for Katz & Besthoff Drug Company, Adler’s Jewelry Store, D.H. Holmes and Higgins Ship Builders. As an artist she has participated in over two-hundred-and-fifty group exhibitions, and has been the subject of over thirty singular exhibitions. As a mature artist, she is most widely known for her minimalist wood sculpture, but continued to draw and paint, even creating a beaded art car from a 1974 American Motor’s Gremlin in the 1980s.
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| Untitled, 1938, ink on paper Ogden Museum of Southern Art Gift of the artist |
An exhibition of her works -- drawn mainly from the gift of approximately eighty-seven paintings, drawings and archival objects from the artist to the Permanent and Study Collections of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art -- was mounted at the Reynolds Ryan Art Gallery in 2010, curated by Bradley Sumrall. Jesselyn Benson Zurik: The Newman and Newcomb Years offered insight into the experience of a Newcomb student in the 1930s, and background to the career of an important American Minimalist sculptor.
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| Untitled, gouache on paper, 1937 Ogden Museum of Southern Art Gift of the artist |
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