{"id":604566,"date":"2026-02-21T00:03:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T00:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/604566\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T00:03:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T00:03:13","slug":"isaiah-zagar-jewish-philadelphia-mosaic-artist-dies-at-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/604566\/","title":{"rendered":"Isaiah Zagar, Jewish Philadelphia mosaic artist, dies at 86"},"content":{"rendered":"

Isaiah Zagar, the famed Jewish mosaic artist whose shimmering, kaleidoscopic installations transformed streets and buildings across Philadelphia<\/a> and founded the city\u2019s Magic Gardens, died on Thursday at the age of 86.<\/p>\n

Zagar died on Thursday of complications from heart failure and Parkinson\u2019s disease<\/a> at his home in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe scale of Isaiah Zagar\u2019s body of work and his relentless artmaking at all costs is truly astounding,\u201d Emily Smith, the executive director of the Magic Gardens, told The Philadelphia Inquirer. \u201cMost people do not yet understand the importance of what he created, nor do they understand the sheer volume of what he has made.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TeensTeens with BBYO visit the Magic Gardens in Philadelphia on Feb. 15, 2026. (credit: Courtesy of BBYO)<\/p>\n

Born Irwin Zagar in Philadelphia in 1939, Zagar grew up in Brooklyn<\/a>, New York, where he received his bachelor\u2019s in painting and graphics at the Pratt Institute of Art. \u201cWhen you\u2019re a Jew growing up in Brooklyn, they don\u2019t name you Isaiah,\u201d he told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1980. \u201cThey name you Ira, or Irving, or Irwin.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1959, when Zagar was 19, he received a summer art scholarship to go to Woodstock, New York, where he encountered the works of famed \u201coutside artist\u201d Clarence Schmidt, who would later become his mentor. During that summer, he also studied Jewish religious texts, which later inspired him to change his first name to Isaiah, according to the Daily Mail.<\/p>\n

In 1963, Zagar met artist Julia Zagar, and the pair were married three months later and joined the Peace Corps as conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

Isaiah Zagar’s early career<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zagar and his wife moved to South Philadelphia in 1968, where she opened the Eye\u2019s Gallery on South Street, and he created his first art installation by embellishing the building\u2019s facade.<\/p>\n

Over the following decades, Zagar used broken tiles, mirrors, and bottles to adorn roughly 50,000 square feet of walls and buildings across Philadelphia with his iconic mosaic art. In the late 1990s, he transformed two empty lots near his South Philadelphia home into an immersive mosaic and sculpture installation that would later become the iconic Magic Gardens.<\/p>\n

Zagar\u2019s works are featured in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. More than 200 of his mosaic pieces can also be found across several states, as well as in Mexico and Chile.<\/p>\n

In 2008, Zagar\u2019s son, the filmmaker Jeremiah Zagar, released the documentary \u201cIn a Dream,\u201d an intimate portrait of his father\u2019s struggles with mental health<\/a> and drive to build the Magic Gardens. He worked with a producer he met in Hebrew class at the Jewish day school, now known as Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy, according to a 2022 profile in the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsaiah was more than our founder; he was our close friend, teacher, collaborator, and creative inspiration,\u201d wrote the Magic Gardens in a post on Facebook. \u201cHe was unlike anyone we have ever met and will ever meet. Above all things, he was an artist. In his lifetime, he created a body of work that is unique and remarkable, and one that has left an everlasting mark on our city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zagar is survived by his wife and two sons, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Isaiah Zagar, the famed Jewish mosaic artist whose shimmering, kaleidoscopic installations transformed streets and buildings across Philadelphia and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":604567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1037,8067,4446,260115,31034,95815,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-604566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-america","tag-art","tag-artist","tag-death","tag-famous-jewish-artists","tag-jewish","tag-mosaic","tag-pa","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philadelphia","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}