Gilbert Shoenbrod Art

Gilbert Adam Schoenbrod, artist-resident of Pacific Grove, was born in Chicago, on September 3, 1903. His parents were from Old Russia, and in his work, he shows the depth and warmth of his Eastern heritage, more especially in the etchings of scholars and ancients. His early childhood was spent in Texas as well as Chicago. Later, in New York, he acquired the first useful skills in drawing at Stuyvesant High School, long recognized for technical and scientific excellence. The groundwork for meticulous detail and accuracy was laid at New York University in his studies of the microscopic structure of the cell. In preparation for a career in medicine, Schoenbrod specialized in biological sciences, but also took time from studies to travel and explore the world of industry. At the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, Schoenbrod entered medical studies, learning through dissection the intricacies of human anatomy. He sensed an imperative need to pursue the talent for drawing and left medical school to study painting and sculpture at Yale University.

During a holiday in New York City, Schoenbrod met Florence Symonton, who became his wife and the mother of their two sons. In both New York and Chicago, Schoenbrod was able to channel his artistic powers into 20 productive years of advertising design and illustration. At 40, he returned to Columbia University, but this time to the school of education, where he earned a master's degree and taught. While at the university, he met an Arabian silversmith who became a close friend, enhancing Schoenbrod's interest in the eastern handicrafts. Under a master's instructions, he acquired the ancient skills of metalcraft and jewelry-making. In 1948, on a trip to the West Coast, he discovered Carmel and in the following year, moved to that haven of artists to open his studio for handcrafted jewelry. The drawings accumulated in portfolios, for the most part, unframed and unseen.

In his early 50s, the urge to draw — and then, to write — became a compulsion for Schoenbrod. He continued to design and make jewelry and become widely known for his skill and craftsmanship. But the jewelry weighed him down as the need for a deeper expression grew more intense. Inner pressures built up, and in 1956, the strain brought on a break of illness. Intensive treatment and recovery, Schoenbrod felt at the time, brought perspective and self-knowledge. He closed the Carmel jewelry studio, and with his wife, retired, first to his old studio in Connecticut, then to a home overlooking the Pacific. From 1957 onward, he was drawing, painting and writing. In April 1971, he gave his first one-man showing of work of the period at the de Saisset Museum and Gallery at Santa Clara University. A book of his poems, The Ecology of the Man Within, related to the paintings on exhibition, was released in time for the show. It was then that the senior researcher of the Smithsonian Institute saw the artist’s work and asked the curator to gather all available material related to Schoenbrod’s life and send it to Washington, D.C. In an age so acutely in need of reconstructive ecology, the artist-author completed a timely book on food and exercise for the "care of the man within." Gilbert Adam Shoenbrod passed away in Monterey, California, in 1996.