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Chaim Gross, sculptor, artist, and teacher, was born March 1904 in the Carpathian Mts. of Austria. He was the youngest of ten children of Moses Gross, a lumber merchant. After a turbulent nomadic existence caused by World War I, Chaim, during 1921 at age 17, immigrated to New York City. This was accomplished with the aid of a brother, Naftoli, who had come to America in 1914.

Between 1922 and 1926, Gross studied sculpture and painting at the Beaux- Arts Institute of Design, attending evening classes and working during the day. It was during this period of time, he met Raphael Soyer, who was to become his lifelong friend. In 1932, in the midst of the Depression, Gross had his first solo exhibition at Manfred Schwarz's The Gallery 144 in Greenwich Village. From 1927 to 1987, he taught sculpture at the Educational Alliance School in New York. In 1932 Chaim Gross married Renee Nechin. And in 1934 Chaim Gross became an American citizen.

Chaim Gross has been the recipient of numerous awards during his lifetime. He won a national sculpture prize of $3000.00 in 1937 under the Art Program of the US Treasury, Washington, DC; he received the Silver Metal at the Paris Exposition in 1937 and Second Prize for the sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 1942. The Whitney Museum of American Art held a one-man exhibition of his work in 1959. In 1963 Chaim Gross received one of the most significant honors in American Art; The Arts and Letters Award, an honor given every five years to the American who has made the most significant contribution to the American arts and culture. In 1989 the Chaim Gross Studio Museum was founded in Greenwich Village, New York.

Chaim Gross died in 1991.