Dahlov Zorach Ipcar (1917- 2017) was a resident of Robinhood, a village in the town of Georgetown. An author, artist, and illustrator of children’s books, she was born November 12, 1917 in Windsor, Vermont. She spent her early years in New York’s Greenwich Village.
Her parents were the artists Marguerite and William Zorach. They encouraged their daughter from infancy to express herself creatively. Not fond of formal art education, they took her to museums and encouraged her to follow her instincts.
Married to Adolph Ipcar in 1936, she settled with her husband at Robinhood Farm.
According to a publication of the Portland Museum of Art on the occasion of the exhibition Dahlov Ipcar: Seven Decades of Creativity,
Her first major paintings, executed in the late 1930’s, were celebrations of rural life – farmers haying, dairying, and harvesting ice – painted in a style influenced by such diverse sources as Pieter Brugel’s depictions of peasant life, Diego Rivera’s murals, and the work of American regionalist painters.
In 1945 she illustrated The Little Fisherman by Margaret Wise Brown and soon after began writing and illustrating her own works.
The Art of Dahlov Ipcar (book cover)
By the 1960’s Ipcar shifted artistic focus as she developed her unique style. As the Museum of Art observed,
“. . . she began making fabric collages using brightly colored, printed cotton fabrics. The juxtaposition of color and pattern inspired her to incorporate decorative design into her paintings. . . . Over time it evolved into the pictorial language of fragmented forms and vivid patterns that characterize her paintings to this day.”
Additional resources
Dahlov Ipcar Biography: https://www.dahlovipcarart.com/biography (accessed December 26, 2020)
Ipcar, Dahlov Zorach.. Animal Hide & Seek. Eau Claire, Wis. E.M. Hale and Company. c1947.
Ipcar, Dahlov Zorach. The Biggest Fish in the Sea. New York. Viking Press. c1972.
Ipcar, Dahlov Zorach. Black and White. New York. A.A. Knopf. c1963.
Dahlov Ipcar: Seven Decades of Creativity. Portland Museum of Art. Portland, Maine. 2001.
Little, Carl. The Art of Dahlov Ipcar. Camden, Me. Down East Books. 2010.
Third Book of Junior Authors, de Montreville, Doris and Donna Hill, eds. New York: H. H. Wilson Company. 1972.
Zorach, William, 1887-1966. Art is My Life: The Autobiography of William Zorach. Cleveland. World Publishing Company. c1967.