Gene Zesch
(b. 1932)
Texas woodcarver, Gene Zesch, is a Depression-Era product of the Texas Hill Country. He graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in animal husbandry and trained as an army pilot for several years before turning to the vocation of woodcarver, a vocation for which Zesch is very widely known.
Political cartoons in newspapers may help to explain Zesch’s work. Such cartoons are often humorous because of their extravagant exaggeration of well-known personalities and because they are accompanied by an apt text which emphasizes some aspect of the person’s politics. Gene Zesch’s work uses the same objectives as the political cartoonist but in three-dimensions.
His characters are highly expressive and often display the hard-bitten, less-than-successful characters of the Texas Hill Country. He catches them artfully in a moment of unawareness which reveals some truth about the lives of us all in one dimension or another.
Fellow artists have collected Zesch’s work for many years. These artists include among others Nick Eggenhofer, John Hampton, James Reynolds, James Bama, Ray Swanson, Joe Beeler and Kent Ullberg. His works have been purchased or commissioned by many famous Americans: Lyndon B. Johnson, Leon Panetta, John Connally, Wally Schirra and Al Hirschfield, among others.
Zesch’s work may be found in many permanent American collections including the Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, American University and Georgia’s Booth Western Art Museum.
