Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko was a Ukrainian-born American avant-garde artist, sculptor, and graphic artist, best known for his original, Cubist-inspired sculptural style. His works dynamically combined Cubist and Futurist influences with ancient Egyptian and primitive aesthetics.
Background
Alexander Archipenko was born on May 30, 1887, in Kyiv, Ukraine (formerly Russian Empire). He was the son of Porfiry Antonowych Archipenko, a professor of engineering at the University of Kyiv, and Poroskowia Vassylivna Archipenko (maiden name Machowa). His elder brother was Eugene Archipenko, a Ukrainian politician, agronomist, and beekeeper. Archipenko's grandfather painted murals for churches.
Education
Alexander Archipenko studied painting and sculpture at the Kyiv Art School (KKHU) between 1902 and 1905. In 1906 he decided to continue his art education under the guidance of Serhiy Svetoslavsky. Later that year he exhibited with Alexander Bogomazov and soon moved to Moscow where he had a chance to present his work in some group shows.
He left for Paris in 1908 and was a resident in the artist's colony La Ruche, among émigré Russian artists, including Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine, Sonia Delaunay-Terk and Nathan Altman. Alexander Archipenko entered the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, but stayed there for only 2 weeks, as he found it more profitable to work on his own and to learn from other artists.
Archipenko opened a studio near Fernand Léger's and through him got acquainted with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. The artist shared with them an enthusiasm for primitive art. From these painters he learned about cubism. By 1909 Archipenko began to realize his cubist style. Even the first phase of his development displays no indecision or immaturity. His Black Seated Torso (1909) is a good example of the early period. After 1910 Alexander Archipenko had exhibitions at Salon des Indépendants, Salon d'Automne together with Aleksandra Ekster, Kazimir Malevich, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, André Derain and other world-famous painters. During the next 2 years, his style became fully developed. Eventually, all his later sculptures tended to be variations of the forms of this period.
Alexander Archipenko favored the human female figure, but only as a convention. He interpreted it freely in abstract forms that featured convex and concave characteristics. From the beginning, he liked to fuse mass and space in lyrical, rhythmic interplay so as to suggest movement. It has been said that he was influenced by the Italian futurists, particularly by Umberto Boccioni, whom he personally knew, but this seems unlikely because Archipenko never adopted the aggressively strident rhythms of the Italians.
Archipenko had his first solo show at the Museum Folkwang at Hagen in Germany in 1912. During this time the artist made a number of figures inspired by the circus, Médrano series. His mixture of various materials such as wood, wire, glass, and mirror was in a quasi-cubist manner, which led to his "sculpto-paintings," a combination of relief and polychromy. In these and other works Alexander Archipenko continued to open up voids within the solid mass of the figure, and he also juxtaposed arabesques against a static, frontal plane.
Alexander Archipenko's career as a teacher also began quite early. In 1912 he established his own art school in Paris, where he taught till 1914. That year he moved to Nice. In 1920 he took part in Twelfth Biennale Internazionale dell'Arte di Venezia in Italy and set up his own Art school in Berlin the following year. The artist participated in the First Russian Art Exhibition (1922) in the Gallery van Diemen in Berlin together with Aleksandra Ekster, Kazimir Malevich, Solomon Nikritin, El Lissitzky and other artists.
Archipenko emigrated to the United States in 1923 and became an American citizen in 1929. In the year of 1933 he exhibited at the Ukrainian pavilion in Chicago as part of the Century of Progress World's Fair. He participated in an exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art in New York in 1936 as well as various exhibitions in Europe and other places in the United States. He opened the Modern School of Fine Arts and Practical Design in Chicago and art school in Bearsville in 1938.
Among his later exhibitions should be recalled the following: solo shows at Katherine Kuh Gallery, Chicago, in 1939; at Katherine Kuh Gallery, Chicago, in 1941; at Nierendorf Gallery, New York, in 1944; shows in "Le Cubisme," Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, in 1953; in Annual Exhibition at Whitney Museum, New York, in 1956; solo shows at Palazzo Barberini, Rome, and at Centro Culturale S. Fedele, Milan, Italy, in 1963.
The Appointment of the four forms, from the portfolio Life Forms
In the Cafe (Woman with Cup)
Group of Nude Figures
Woman with Umbrella
Torso in Space
Bathers
Danse Macabre (Group Terror #41)
Coquette 1950
Two Nude Female Figures with a Cloth
The Boxers (La Lutte)
Nude Female Figure Shown from the Back
sculpture
Head of a Woman
Sorrow
Lying horizontal
Madonna of the Rocks
Grace
Blue dancer
The Past
Seated Female Nude (Black Torso)
The Gondolier
Arabian
Carrousel Pierrot
Woman with a Fan
Torso
Blue Dancer
Seated Geometric Figure
Mask
Torso
Standing female figure
King Solomon
Vase Figure
Woman combing her hair
Views
Quotations:
"The quality of my work cannot be measured by its abstractness as conservatism, by its geometrical angularity as curvatures, but only by the large totality of its content and its variety of expression. My old works contain elements of the new, and the new contains elements of the old. By eating only a single apple, one cannot judge the size of the apple tree. History proves that works of art with a truly spiritual content remain immune to criticism."
"Traditionally there was a belief that sculpture begins where material touches space...Ignoring this tradition, I experimented, using the reverse idea and concluded that sculpture may begin where space is encircled by the material."
"I did not take from Cubism, but added to it."
"In teaching I make my students realize the necessity of applying the psychological process for the discovery of creative reactions within themselves before they make the form which should contain creative power. This is a fundamental knowledge that vitalizes the work of art."
"What Plato said about ideas is true, they are in the air. One can get them everywhere. That is why one finds the same things, similar religions, similar works of art in very distant places. In short, everything exists in the universe. Come, take it if you can."
"If you don't like garlic, you can't understand modern art."
Membership
In 1962 Alexander Archipenko was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was also a member of the National Sculpture Society.
American Academy of Arts and Letters
1962
Connections
Alexander Archipenko was married to Angelica Forster, a German sculptor who exhibited under the name Gela Forster. She was a founding member of "Group 1919" of the Dresdner Sezession. In 1960 he remarried Frances Gray, an artist and former student.
Father:
Porfiry Antonowych Archipenko
Mother:
Poroskowia Vassylivna Archipenko
Wife:
Frances Gray
ex-wife:
Angelica Forster
Brother:
Eugene Porfirovych Archipenko
References
Alexander Archipenko: A Centennial Tribute
Published in conjunction with the exhibition of Archipenko's art, the catalogue includes pieces from the Erich Goeritz Collection, from the artist's estate, and from other collections that will provide important opportunities for assessing the artist's crucial role in the development of 20th-century art.