In a six-decade career marked by several distinct phases, Zabarsky's imaginative use of color, formal experimentation and commitment to narrative organization in both traditional and avant garde styles are hallmarks of his work.
The third of four children, and a first-generation Russian-American, Zabarsky was born in Worcester, MA in 1932 to Anna Pearl (née Glazer) and Max, Lithuanian and Ukrainian immigrants respectively, the latter from Kiev.
[13] Raised in Worcester's historic Green Island/Union Hill, an area settled by Lithuanian Jews attracted by the local industry, Zabarsky was twice orphaned by the age of 16.
He trained for one year with the artist and educator Leonard Baskin at the Worcester Art Museum School, alongside his future wife, painter and writer Joyce Reopel, and his childhood friend, printmaker Sidney Hurwitz.
Typically spotlighting cultural figures, such as Che Guevara in The Argentinian Cyclist (1969–70)[15] or Massachusetts labor leader Arnold Dubin beside cameos of Paul Robeson and Jimmy Hoffa garnered attention.
[16] Still more potent was his work around civil rights, in paintings such as The Artist and the Assassin (1965), which featured an ailing Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, haunting Klansmen, and a wild horse.
[19] A multi-year exploration of Old Testament themes in representational style followed, and over the course of several paintings (e.g. Red Room [1975-76], The Garden [1980]) he accrued a large body of work collectively known as the Susannah and the Elders series.
The latter features bursts of bright color and a bold off-center composition that spans Edvard Munch’s The Scream, Sigmund and Anna Freud and the painter Balthus smashing through rich blues, crimsons, violets and sunny yellows to cross cultures, types and textures all gently bound together by the scrawled word “contemporaries.” Also an educator, Zabarsky taught art for nearly three decades at various institutions including the Swain School of Design,[23] Wheaton College[24] and the University of New Hampshire.