Art: Dahlov

Like most children, little Dahlov Zorach scribbled pictures when she was three years old. Unlike most children, she was a sculptor's daughter. Fond Father William Zorach began saving all her work he could lay his hands on, kept on saving it. Result: A unique exhibition last week (at the Young People's Gallery in Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art) which showed 19 years of an artist's growth.

Neither her parents nor the art instructors at her progressive schools ever tried to teach Dahlov. She went her own gait, shifting happily about from crayons to lithographs, wood carving to ceramics, water colors to oils. No prodigy, she had the varying interests of a normal, healthy child; through them all kept the Zorach household overrun with animals. Her long-suffering family did not even rebel when she brought home a baby skunk, though somehow it escaped during the night.

At four she drew bugs and tigers pulling streetcars, later painted unicorns, circuses, zebras playing banjos. Since she was never exposed to lessons in anatomy, drawing or perspective, her people and animals are boneless but nonetheless seem natural. Her father's explanation: "She draws a picture of an animal like you write your name—through long, uninhibited practice."

Dahlov Zorach Ipcar, 22, now lives with her husband, Adolph, on William Zorach's farm at Robinhood, Me. She plows, pitches hay and looks after the horses, does not milk or drive a car. She still finds time to paint farm and hunting scenes, recently did a mural through the SFA (see below) for the post office at La Follette, Tenn. Last month she bore her first child, a son. Dahlov got her own name from a song the Zorachs used to sing to her about "Mama, Daddy love 'um." Her older brother Tessim's name came from "Infinitesimal." Her own son survived his christening with a simple "Bobby-Bill."