Zeke Ziner's artwork is notable for its strength of concept, mastery of material and warm humanity.

He was a fine draftsman, an innovative printmaker, a prolific sculptor and an imaginative graphic designer.

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Perhaps best known for his stainless steel sculpture, Zeke Ziner’s drawing and printmaking played a large role in a long career of fine arts. He exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Library of Congress, the Hudson River Museum, the Arts Club of Chicago, The American Institute of Graphic Arts, The Los Angeles County Fair and the University of Connecticut. Ziner taught at The Institute of Design in Chicago; City University of N.Y.; College of New Rochelle; State University of N.Y. Purchase, NY; The Hudson River Museum School and The Paier School of Art in Hamden, CT.

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His work is represented in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, Yale University and innumerable private collections. Ziner was a productive artist for over sixty years. He was a modern artist and designer with a love for traditional technique. He was also a innovative sculptor and printmaker whose contributions have added much to contemporary art. 
He shared an early predilection for graphic work with high school (DeWitt Clinton, Bronx, NY) classmates Bob Blackburn and Ted Shearer, and went on to study at the Art Student’s League with Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Vaclav Vytlacil and others. He traveled to Mexico for a year on an arts scholarship where he met Orozco.  He designed textiles for the André Proteau Co. before getting drafted in 1941. He married Florence (Feenie) Katz. He served with the U.S. Army Core of Engineers in Alaska and then two years in Europe.

At the end of the war, safe and sound, Zeke and Feenie moved to Chicago.

Zeke taught drawing at the Illinois Institute of Design, painted, and was friends

with sculptors Marion Perkins, Si Gordon and Boris Gilbertson. He worked at

Goldsholl and Associates through the 1950’s, helping to transform the look

of print and packaging to the modern age, designing among others, the

enduring Motorola logo.

Mr. Ziner exhibited at The Art Institute of Chicago in group and solo exhibits.

Many of his fine art drawings, prints, sculpture and paintings of that time were

sold privately in a social context and became part of the culture of mid-century

Chicago.  A brush drawing, Mother and Child was included in the exhibit,

Recent Drawings USA sponsored by The Museum of Modern Art in 1956.

Also notably included in that exhibit were drawings by Josef Albers, Leonard

Baskin, Misch Kohn, Leo Leonni, Rico Lebrun and Andy Worhol!

                                                                                             

                                                                                                          Image: Zeke Ziner in 1956

In 1958 He moved the family to Dobbs Ferry, NY, working as an art director for print and film into the 1960’s. Becoming increasingly interested in making sculpture, by the early 1970’s he had trained in welding and equipped his shop, adopting stainless steel as a preferred medium. 

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     "I rummage through the industrial waste of America, intrigued by the variety  of form and shape of this

     effluent. I have collected an awful lot of stuff, both large and small, limited only by what I can carry back

     to the studio in my van. I prefer stainless steel because it's properties offer the greatest resistance to my will.

     I sketch out some ideas and proceed to cut, grind, weld and hammer without mercy, this fine metal, until

     I'm exhausted. The stainless changes slightly if at all. Not until the final polishing and finishing do I know

     whether or not the work will succeed. I love the process and work at it for those rare moments when the

     final product suggests sculpture."  Zeke Ziner 1982

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The ink drawings played an important role in the process, allowing a give and take in finding solutions for such a resistant material. With relentless but cheerful filing, mostly, he would shape and blend his welds: “one piece”, he’d say. After polishing, the steel becomes the brightest thing in the room, picking up all available light. There is a futuristic quality to them which is further amplified when the possible longevity is considered. Truly they were made with a distant future in mind.

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     "When I began to study industrial printing processes in the late 1980's, I found that the flat-bed cylinder

     press allowed tremendous control over cut-block printing. Zeke shared my enthusiasm for the medium and

     cut his compositions with the skill of an engraver and the freedom of a painter, combining an uncanny

     cutting technique with a focused imagination."  Joe Ziner

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Zeke and Joe Ziner collaborated to produce signed editions of the Greek Harbour scenes, Imagined Ancestors, and Musicians Series. These numbered prints are for sale in this exhibition. The woodblocks are unusual in that they were made using edge-grain red cedar collected decades before. The grain is remarkably strait and fine, 17' wide, the accumulation of 400 years of growth. The nature of the wood makes conventional carving techniques unsuitable, instead, using the differing densities of the spring and summer wood, Ziner depressed the softer spring wood with a Gramaphone needle along each of the year's growth rings, obtaining an effect reminiscent of steel engraving.

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     "Over the years similar images and forms recur, as if each of us possesses a fluid bank of scripts which

     we never exhaust."  Z.Z. 1980

                                                                                        In 1984 Zeke had moved to Branford, CT and renovated a                                                                                                retired elementary school with studios for graphics and separate                                                                                          studio for metalwork where he was happily productive for over                                                                                            twenty year. Zeke Ziner worked with stainless steel until his 85th                                                                                          year. About thirty of his sculptures and nearly 1000 works on                                                                                              paper comprise the Ziner Art Collection. For further information                                                                                            you may reach archivist Joe Ziner at: ziner.joe@gmail.com

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                                                                                        The exhibition 'Freedom and Discipline" includes six metal                                                                                                    sculptures: Dancing Pines, Smoke, Community, Cat, Morning,                                                                                              and Celestial, a large selection of framed prints and several

                                                                                        table top portfolios of Ziner's artworks.

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                                                                                       Image: Zeke Ziner 1999