Eugenie Gershoy - Personal Background Information

Gershoy was born in Krivoi Rog, Russia and was brought to New York City as an infant.  Considered somewhat of a child prodigy, Gershoy was copying Old Master drawings at the age of 5.  By the time Gershoy came to Woodstock in 1921 her own individual artistic style was already evident in her sculptures.  Eugenie Gershoy worked in stone, bronze, terracotta, plaster and papier-mache.  Gershoy’s sculptures were mainly figurative in nature and many of her artist peers such as Carl Walters, Raphael and Moses Soyer, William Zorach and Lucille Blanch, became her subjects.  Eugenie Gershoy’s works on paper should not be overlooked.  She was the winner of the Gaudens Medal for Fine Draughtsmanship at the tender age of 17.  Grant Arnold introduced her to lithography in 1930 and Gershoy depicted many scenes of Woodstock artists and their daily activities through this medium.  From 1942 to 1966 Gershoy lived and painted in San Francisco where she taught at the San Francisco Art Institute.  She traveled extensively, filling sketchbooks with scenes of Mexico, France, Spain, Africa and India.  During her later years Eugenie Gershoy returned to New York City and concentrated on numerous well received exhibitions.  Her last exhibition in 1986 at Sid Deutsch Gallery included many of the sculptures that will be in the Fletcher Gallery from July 19 – August 31.

John Russell, former chief critic of fine arts for the New York Times, writes about the 1986 Sid Deutsch exhibition:

“As Eugenie Gershoy won the Saint-Gaudens Medal for fine draftsmanship as long ago as 1914 and since 1967 has had 15 papier-mache portrait figures suspended from the ceiling of the lobby of the Hotel Chelsea, she must be ranked as a veteran of the New York scene.  Her present exhibition includes not only the high-spirited papier-mache sculptures for which she is best known but a group of small portraits of artists, mostly dating from the 30’s, that is strongly evocative.”

Eugenie Gershoy is an artist to take note of for several reasons.  She was a woman who received great awards and recognition during a time when most female artists were struggling to hold their own against their male counterparts.  As a young girl she won a scholarship to the Arts Student League where she met Hannah Small, who inspired her to start sculpting and became her lifelong friend.  These two women made quite a name for themselves, both while they were alive and thereafter.  Gershoy was one of the first residents of the Maverick Art Colony in Woodstock, NY.  This gave her access to an extensive network of artists that were masters of their craft, such as Arnold and Lucille Blanch, Helen and Carl Walters and Harry Gottlieb, who became her husband.  Gershoy documented life at the Maverick and her plaster bust of Hervey White, the co-founder of the original Woodstock artists’ colony and the sole founder of the Maverick, sits in the permanent collection of the Woodstock Artist Association.

Eugenie Gershoy has been represented in almost every major collection including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of American Art, the Syracuse Museum of American Art, the Delgado Museum of Art, Skidmore College of Fine Art.

She has had numerous exhibitions including prominent galleries in New York, San Francisco, New Orleans and her most famous show after her death, “Fantasy and Imagination in Sculpture” at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC.

Gershoy participated in the WPA Federal Art Project, taught at numerous schools and San Francisco Art Institute, was the recipient of the Art Grant to Europe and was an artist resident of the Hotel Chelsea