Harold Paris
Harold Persico Paris was an American printmaker, sculptor and educator.Biography
Paris was born on August 16, 1925 in Long Island, New York. In World War II he served as a correspondent for the American military newspaper Stars and Stripes and during that time he witnessed the death camps at Buchenwald concentration camp which had a profound effect on him and his art.
Paris studied printmaking at Atelier 17 in New York City and sculptural casting at Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich. In 1953 and 1954 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was also the recipient of a Fulbright Grant and a Tiffany Foundation grant.
In the early 1960s Paris settled in California. In 1963 he became a professor at University of California, Berkeley. He taught printmaking and sculpture and co-founded the bronze foundry there. Paris was also an involved with the Peter Voulkos' pot palace ceramic studio.
Paris exhibited extensively while in California. In 1972 a major exhibition of his work The California Years was held at the University Art Museum in Berkeley.
Paris died in El Cerrito, California on July 1, 1979.
Paris' work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art,the National Gallery of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. His papers are in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution.
