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Jacques LipchitzPrometheus Conquering the Vulture, Gouache Painting, Modern & Cubist 1938Circa 1938
Circa 1938
About the Item
Artist: Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973, French)
Title: Prometheus & the Vulture
Medium: Gouache & Pencil on Paper
Movement: Modern, Cubist
Year of Work: Circa 1938
Signature: Top Left
Dimensions: Framed 25 x 19.5", Unframed 12 x 16.5"
Condition: Good with slight foxing
Artist Bio:
Jacques Lipchitz, the eldest son of a wealthy Jewish contractor, was born in Druskieniki, Lithuania in 1891. His interest in modeling and drawing was evident when he was in grade school. At the age of 18, and against the wishes of his father to become an engineer, he departed for Paris to enroll in anatomy and stone carving classes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts - at the encouragement of his mother and uncle. He also studied at the Academie Julian and the Academie Colarossi.
In 1914, Lipchitz traveled with Diego Rivera to Madrid and Majorca, where he was introduced to Picasso, Max Jacob, Juan Gris, Modigliani, and other artists in the Cubist circle. However, his greatest influence came from his interest in art history, providing him with an unlimited source of imagery.
Lipchitz applied theories of mathematics and proportion to the concepts of Braque and Picasso, as did many second generation Cubists. A relatively new movement in art was being created, where curves, planes, lines, and their intersections and overlapping would form new relationships. His works display a lifetime of continuous growth and exploration, spanning the Cubism style to Mannerism, and subjects from non-committal to those that carry profound visual symbolism. Although he was a leader in innovation and experimentation, his work never embraced total abstraction and never tried to escape from the reality of art as symbolic expression.
In the mid-1920s, Lipchitz began making sculptures in a distinctively new style. His sculptures were frequently constructed from bronze and engaged new ways of exploring light and space. These new works, called transparents, provided a greater emphasis on utilizing negative space. Although unpopular at the time, the works and ideas behind the transparents became popular with Picasso and Juan Gris.
After 1925, Lipchitz departed from the Cubist manner and began to soften the geometric angularity of his pieces into curvilinear, openwork sculptures whose expressive subjects were drawn from ancient mythology and the Bible. He achieved naturalism in these works that can be seen in Woman Leaning on Elbow.
In 1941, Varian Fry was instrumental in facilitating Lipchitz to flee Vichy, France, to the United States -- during the German invasion of France. Lipchitz relocated in New York where he continued to fill commissions from all over the world including The Spirit of Enterprise, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia; Notre Dame de Liesse, Assy in Haute-Savoie; and his most famous work commissioned for the 1937 Paris Exposition Universelle entitled "Prometheus". (In the myth, the gods punish Prometheus for bringing fire to humans by turning him into stone and allowing a vulture to peck at his liver. In the piece, however, Prometheus is shown unchained, strangling the vulture, used as a symbol of ignorance.) In 1951, he presented Fry with his completed Embracing Figures. In 1952, a fire destroyed and claimed most of Lipchitz' work.
Examples of his work can be seen in the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, and the Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania.
- Creator:Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973, French)
- Creation Year:Circa 1938
- Dimensions:Height: 25 in (63.5 cm)Width: 1 in (2.54 cm)Depth: 19.5 in (49.53 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Saint Augustine, FL
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU136327187242
Jacques Lipchitz
Biography: Jacques Lipchitz was a celebrated Lithuanian-born French sculptor best known for his Cubist works depicting figures, portraits, and still lifes made of bronze or stone. Born Chaim Jacob Lipchitz on August 22, 1891 in Druskinikai, Lithuania to a Litvak (Lithuanian Jewish) family. To please his parents, Lipchitz studied engineering as a young man. But around 1909, he decided to pursue art instead and moved to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the Académie Julian in Paris. Lipichitz was a part of the artistic milieu in the famed Montmarte neighborhood of Paris, which included Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, and Juan Gris. He became especially influenced with work by Pablo Picasso, who had pioneered a style of art called Cubism. Cubism was an art movement in which images were fractured and broken into simultaneous fragmented shards of perspective. It was strongly geometric and not based on traditional representational art like portraits or landscapes. At the beginning of his career, Lipchitz created figural sculptures, but by around 1913 he'd shifted direction toward Cubism. At the time, most Cubist artists were painters, but Lipchitz had met Russian sculptor Alexander Archipenko, who was experimenting with Cubist sculpture. However he always retained recognizable figural elements in his work.
When faced with the Nazi occupation, he fled to the United States during World War II. Lipchitz went on to have a retrospective exhibition in 1954 which travelled from The Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and finally to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Today, his works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., among others. Lipchitz died on May 16, 1973 in Capri, Italy.
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