Joseph Margulies moved as a young boy from his native Austria to New York City, where he spent most of his childhood. There, he worked occasionally at his parents’ East Side grocery store, performed and made music with his three brothers, and developed his artistic talent. For his informal artistic training, Margulies sketched his rabbis, requesting to be transferred to new teachers once he had memorized the wise faces and flowing beards of subsequent ones. After realizing he could use his artistic talent to construct for himself a career as an artist, Margulies attended classes at the National Academy of Design during the day and Cooper Union in the evening. He also studied at the Art Students League under Joseph Pennell, an image of whom he later captured in a lithograph. The young artist was rewarded for his artistic accomplishments in 1920 with the Tiffany Foundation Scholarship, which allowed him to reside and work at the idyllic Long Island estate of Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Upon completion of his residence at the Tiffany retreat, Margulies married Mary, a graduate of Columbia Law School. Her family, who owned a lucrative lingerie business, funded the honeymoon that took the couple throughout Europe. This voyage, which lasted two or three years, introduced the young artist to the inhabitants and locales of the old world and inspired a sizeable group of prints. The numerous etchings, aquatints, and lithographs that resulted from this lengthy trip illustrate both notable monuments and old, forgotten corners in Paris; the hardy fishermen of Brittany; and the impossibly steep and twisting alleys in the French Riviera. They also portray the lively characters of Margulies’s native Austria as well as the graceful canals and bridges of Bruges and Venice.

Finding a rapidly changing New York when he returned home in the mid-1920s, Margulies continued to use printmaking to document his experiences. The artist returned to his depictions of the rabbis and Jewish scholars of his old neighborhood, often focusing on the weary gazes and looks of pained meditation on their sage faces. In an attempt to portray the myriad transformations occurring in urban life, Margulies also focused on Ashcan-style subjects, profiling East Side residents, peddlers, and wanderers with nowhere left to go. At the same time, the artist also began to receive commissions to portray in prints and oil paintings more prominent New Yorkers, including politicians, professors, writers, artists, and entertainers, many of them Jewish.

Although he retained at least a part time residence in New York City, the artist turned northward in the mid-1940s to Cape Ann, Massachusetts, a location in which he would spend a significant amount of time for the rest of his life. There, just as he had done in New York and Europe, he illustrated the scenes and lives of the locals. Also in the 1940s Margulies traveled to Mexico, where he sketched the peasants going to the market, playing their lively music, and gathering in family groups. When he was not traveling to Mexico or summering on Cape Ann, though, Margulies always returned to his home in New York City.

No matter where he worked, Margulies strove for realism. He repeatedly voiced his distaste for the abstract art that was favored by the more avant garde circles throughout his career, stating that “to represent the human being in geometric patterns and to strip it of all sensitive and emotional qualities is foreign to my ideal” (Interview). Along the same lines, the artist strongly believed that are should be both about and for people. “‘Art is universal…It should be based on the human experience of individuals…Art should not be intellectual. It should be based on human understanding’”(Winebrenner). Margulies’s hundreds of prints, with their realism and relatability, perfectly illustrate both of these strong beliefs.




Much of this article was originally published in “Joseph Margulies: New Print Catalogue Raisonné & Retrospective Exhibition.” Journal of the Print World Vol. 29 No. 4. p.26.

Citations:

Interview with Joseph Margulies. Interviewer and date uncited.

Winebrenner, Dolph. “Artist Reveals Free Trend.” Daily News (LA) 8/25/37.

Click here to return to the artist's raisonne