ABOUT

I was born in Newark, New Jersey on May 19th ,1943 to a middle class Jewish family, the eldest of two children. My father , Raymond Zimetbaum was an intellectual who was very involved in the NYC art world and became friendly with Lou Pollack ,owner of the Peridot Gallery on East 12th Street . Lou was the first dealer , starting in the late 1940's ,who showed many of the breakthrough abstract expressionists early on. These included Philip Guston, Jackson Pollock, Esteban Vicente, Louise Bourgeois, James Brooks, and Jimmy Rosati .He was the first American dealer to rediscover the work of Medardo Rosso and bring it to NYC.

As a child, ten or so, through Lou, I met Esteban Vicente and visited both his and Jimmy Rosati's studios on East 10th Street, NYC. I was so taken with their studios and so impressed with them as men that I decided that they were what I would become someday.

After graduating from Weequahic High School in Newark in 1961 I went to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to study art. It was there that I met Mercedes Matter ,who was my drawing instructor during my junior year, 1963. A group of students in my class were very unhappy because too little time was spent in the studio ( 15 hours a week ) and too much time in degree required classes.

That September, Art News published an article by Mrs. Matter entitled "What's Wrong with U.S. Art Schools" which was an extremely articulate and passionate diatribe that echoed our disatisfaction with Pratt, We decided the best way to receive the training we wanted was to start our own school. When we approached Mrs. Matter with our idea she embraced it , out of this the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting & Sculpture was born.

During the next 3 years, 1964-1967, I t studied at the school which was then located in a large loft at 646 Broadway, NYC, I continued drawing with Mercedes Matter, studied painting with Esteban Vicente, Charles Cajori and Leland Bell, and studied sculpture with Sidney Geist and most importantly Giorgio Spaventa, who had a profound impact on me.

At that time I had a loft on Great Jones Street, around the corner from the school and often opened the school at 8:30 am and was there until 11:00 pm. I was also very involved in the administration of the school, first as leader of the student body and later as director of the school, which I did briefly in 1966. I was obsessed with making the dream of the school a reality and basically burned out, soon therafter had a breakdown and wound up in a mental hospital in Westport , Connecticutt. After my release,6 weeks later,I walked away from the school too embarassed to face my friends and colleagues and went into a tremendous depression which lasted for several years.

I had been both newly married and was a new father, to my daughter, Erica, while this was going on. I paid a big price for starting the school. My wife, Nancy, left me and moved to Maine with my daughter.

This was a very painful period in my life, yet I have never regretted it because we achieved something so extraordinary. Creating a real art school where none had existed before. It was a dream turned into a reality through hard work , the right mix of both visionary students and faculty, most especially Mercedes Matter.

I have always worked from the model,both in clay and drawing. For the last 10 years I have taught figure sculpture at the Chautauqua School of Art in western New York State. I currently have organized an open figure sculpture workshop at Wagner College on Staten Island and for the last 9 years have exhibited with Friends of Fire, a craft guild on Staten Island.

I am also writing a history of the founding of the New York Studio School for which I have received a grant from the Harriet & Esteban Vicente Trust.I am also the subject of a feature length documentary entitled " Marc Zimetbaum - Journey of an American Artist" that was made in 2006 by Eric Emerick and Mark Oz. It premiered at Chautauqua in 2007 and is available for sale on Amazon and their are 3 clips that can be viewed on You Tube.