Chaim Gross (1904-1991)

Chaim Gross was the most significant proponent of direct carving to emerge in America in the 1930s. The method of reducing stone or wood to its sculptural form, as Walter Craven writes, “had either died out or become a folk art in the course of the 19th century.” (Sculpture in America, Cranbury, New Jersey, 1969, p. 587). Gross was instrumental in reviving an interest in the intrinsic qualities of material; “He was inspired by the grain, the color and the texture of the hardest--and thus the heaviest--woods: cocobolo, ebony, ipil wood, lignum vitae, mahogany, palo blanco, and walnut. Gross, like most American carvers, identified with the mystical content of tribal sculpture and equated such density of mass with the eternal qualities he sought in his works.” (I.S. Fort, The Figure in American Sculpture: A Question of Modernity, Seattle, Washington, 1995, p. 117)

I Love My Baby is an excellent example of how Gross’ work is as much about its material as its subject matter. The form of a mother lovingly supporting her child aloft was a theme Gross often utilized throughout the course of his artistic career, but here such an archetypal and universal subject takes a backseat to his technique. The polished surface of the lignum vitae, gouged and cut away in some places, smooth and curvilinear in others, makes the process in which Gross created this beautifully abstract work the central focus. As a result of this lyrical, direct carving, Gross creates the impression that "the child is a kind of acrobat, joyously feeling the air with its body and legs, while the mother is, in face and in form, all love, all pride, stretching upward to meet and support the child." (F. Getlein, Chaim Gross, New York, 1974, p. 41)

I Love My Baby was awarded a prize when exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1954.