In 1887, William Zorach was born in Jurbarkas, Lithuania to a Jewish family that included ten children. Zorach and his family immigrated to Cleveland, Ohio in 1894, where he became absorbed with creating lithographs and oil paintings. Later in his life, Zorach was influenced by Cubism and Fauvism when painting, but possessed a unique style when sculpting simple, figurative subjects of stone and wood. Along with his wife, Marguerite Thompson Zorach, William Zorach was a part of the avant-garde New York art scene and he is often credited as a founder of the early American Modernism movement. Zorach is hailed primarily for his sculptures, including Spirit of the Dance, Man and Work, and Spirit of the Sea, all of which are housed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

In adolescence, William Zorach studied at the Cleveland School of Art and began an apprenticeship with a lithography firm in the northern Ohio city. When Zorach was 20, he relocated to New York and enrolled at the National Academy of Design, where he collected accolades for drawings and paintings. Just three years later, he moved to Paris to further his education at La Palette, where Zorach was introduced to the Cubism and Fauvism movements, and where he also took painting classes with John Duncan Fergusson, Jacques-Emile Blanche, and his future wife. Despite lacking a specific education in the discipline, Zorach began sculpting in 1917, and by 1922, he had ceased all painting with the exception of watercolors. Regarding his work with sculpture, Zorach was integral in the revival of direct carving, in which the sculptor carves from a block without the assistance of a model or mechanical devices. Zorach also wrote two books and inspired countless sculpting students during his lengthy teaching career at the Art Students League in New York City from 1929 until 1960. He enjoyed spending time at his farm on Georgetown Island, Maine with his wife and two children. William Zorach continued to work as an artist until his death in 1966.