Melvin Joel Zabarsky (1932–2019) was an American figurative painter who created representational work in the narrative tradition. Known for a bright, bold palette, his work often explores political, historical and cultural themes to surreal and realist effect. In a six-decade career marked by several distinct phases, Zabarsky's imaginative use of color, formal experimentation and commitment to narrative organization in both traditional and avant garde styles are hallmarks of his work. In an interview with the British philosophers Donald and Monica Skilling, he said, "I'm discovering history, or a narrative, within a painting, as I go along."
That sensibility is in keeping with what Boston Globe critic Robert Taylor defined as "urban, Jewish, introverted and lyrical," which he credits to the artists championed by art dealer Boris Mirski, Boston's leading gallerist from 1944 to 1979, and his NYC counterpart, Edith Halpert of the Downtown Gallery. This group included Zabarsky, fellow artist and wife Joyce Reopel, Hyman Bloom, Barbara Swan, Jack Levine, Marianna Pineda, Harold Tovish and others, who helped overcome Boston's conservative distaste for the avant-garde, occasionally female, and often Jewish artists later classified as Boston expressionists. Unique to New England, the art movement had lasting national and local influence, and is now in its third generation.
Background & education
The third of four children, and a first-generation Russian-American, Zabarsky was born in Worcester, MA in 1932 to Anna Pearl (née Glazer) and Max, Lithuanian and Ukrainian immigrants respectively, the latter from Kiev. Raised in Worcester's historic Green Island/Union Hill, an area settled by Lithuanian Jews attracted by the local industry, Zabarsky was twice orphaned by the age of 16. His older sister Goldie, a fashion merchandiser, took over as head of household, while his much elder brother, already living with a family of his own, worked as a commercial artist.
Zabarsky started drawing and painting at an early age, and dreamed of becoming a cartoonist. By 17, his sights had turned to fine arts. He trained for one year with the artist and educator Leonard Baskin at the Worcester Art Museum School, alongside his future wife, painter and writer Joyce Reopel, and his childhood friend, printmaker Sidney Hurwitz.
Drafted at 19, Zabarsky was stationed in Stuttgart, Germany during the Korean War. He married Reopel upon his return to the U.S. in 1955. They both enrolled at the Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Arts, Oxford University where they remained until 1957. They returned to the U.S. for additional study, with Zabarsky later graduating from the School of Fine & Applied Arts at Boston University with a BFA in 1958, and from the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Cincinnati with an MFA in 1960.
Career
Early political work
From the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, Zabarsky's paintings featured political themes, semi-realist portraiture and stylized trompe l'oeil geometric backgrounds. Typically spotlighting cultural figures, such as Che Guevara in The Argentinian Cyclist (1969–70) or Massachusetts labor leader Arnold Dubin beside cameos of Paul Robeson and Jimmy Hoffa garnered attention. Still more potent was his work around civil rights, in paintings such as The Artist and the Assassin (1965), which featured an ailing Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, haunting Klansmen, and a wild horse. Atlantic Cortege, another in this series, spotlights an African American funeral centered on a coffin. Meanwhile, an earlier painting The Hanging of the Hare (1957–58) explored similar themes, but more allusively, by referencing Dürer's Young Hare watercolor.
Dada and still-life realism
By the 1970s, Zabarsky's geometry began to look more like still life, his palette lightened and edges softened. The eponymous Teeth on a Pedestal (1974) is one of several Dada or Absurdist pieces from this period, glorifying in teeth, or dentures, often posed beside a model of a muscular man.