An early exponent of modernism in the United States, Marguerite Zorach was born in Santa Rosa, California. She was admitted to Stanford University in 1908, but did not complete her studies there, traveling instead to Europe with her aunt. In Paris she attended the Académie de La Palette, a post-impressionist art school. She met Picasso and Gertrude Stein and exhibited in the 1910 exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants and the 1911 Salon d'Automne. In Paris she also met her future husband William Zorach, a fellow art student, and introduced him to the latest modern art. They moved to New York City and were married in 1912. Their apartment became the locus of a lively social circle of artists, and their growing family became the subjects of their modern paintings, drawings, sculptures, and textiles. Zorach's paintings combined elements of cubism and fauvism and placed her at the cutting edge of American modernism in the early 20th century. As her children grew, Marguerite changed her focus to embroidered tapestries.
