Jacques Lipchitz
(1891 - 1973)
Of Jewish origin, he was born Chaim Jacob Lipchitz
in Druskininkai, Lithuania.
He studied engineering before moving to Paris in 1909 to study at the
École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian.
It was there, in the artistic communities of Montmartre
and Montparnasse that he joined a group of artists that included Juan
Gris and Pablo Picasso and where his friend, Amadeo
Modigliani, painted "The Sculptor Jacques Lipchitz and His
Wife Berthe Lipchitz."
Living in this environment, Lipchitz soon began to
create Cubist sculptures. In 1912, he exhibited at the Salon National
des Beaux-Arts and the Salon d'Automne with his first one-man show held
at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie L’Effort Moderne in Paris
in 1920. In 1922, he was commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in Merion,
Pennsylvania for five bas-reliefs.
With artistic innovation at its height, in the 1920s he experimented
with abstract forms he called transparent sculptures. Later he developed
a more dynamic style, which he applied with telling effect to bronze
figure and animal compositions.
With the German occupation of France during World War II, and
the deportation of Jews to the Nazi
death camps, Jacques Lipchitz had to flee France. With the assistance
of the American journalist Varian
Fry in Marseille, he escaped the Nazi regime and went to the United
States. There, he eventually settled in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.
In 1954 a Lipchitz retrospective traveled from The Museum of Modern
Art in New York to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and The Cleveland
Museum of Art. In 1959, his series of small bronzes "To the Limit
of the Possible" was shown at Fine Arts Associates in New York.
Beginning in 1963, he returned to Europe where he worked
for several months of each year in Pietrasanta, Italy.
In 1972, his autobiography was published on the occasion of an exhibition
of his sculpture at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Jacques Lipchitz died in Capri, Italy. His body was
flown to Jerusalem for burial.
Selected works:
"Acrobat on Horseback" - (1914)
"Bather" - (1916-17)
"Sailor with Guitar" - 1917
"Bather, bronze" - 1923-25
"Reclining Nude with Guitar" - (1928), a prime example of
Cubism
"Dancer with Veil" - (1928)
"Dancer" - (1929)
"Bull and Condor" - (1932)
"Bust of a Woman" - (1932)
"David and Goliath" - (1933)
"Embracing Figures" - (1941)
"Prometheus Strangling the Vulture" - (1944)
"Rescue II"- (1947)
"Mother and Child" - (1949)
"Bellerophon Taming Pegasus: Large Version" - (1964-66)
"Peace on Earth" - (1967-1969)
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