Jacques Lipchitz was a French sculptor whose style was based on the principles of Cubism; he was a pioneer of nonrepresentational sculpture. At the end of his long lifetime and multinational trek, Lipchitz may be regarded as one of the foremost contributors to the Cubist style.
Background
Jacques Lipchitz was born Chaim Jacob Lipschitz to a Jewish family in Druskininkai, a small town in the former Russian empire (modern-day Lithuania). His father, Abraham Lipchitz, a building contractor, was rarely home, leaving the rearing of Lipchitz largely to his mother Rachel.
In keeping with his father's wishes, Lipchitz began studying engineering. It was thanks to his mother's encouragement, however, that the young Lipchitz at age 17 gave up engineering and moved to Paris in 1908. Although his father was disappointed, Lipchitz later said that "after I went to Paris, my father forgave me and as long as he was able to, he contributed to my support."
Education
Jacques Lipchitz went to school in Bialystok and Vilna, where he became interested in sculpture. In keeping with his father's wishes, Lipchitz began studying engineering. When he was eighteen, he went to Paris to study art. At the Académie Julien, he learned a method of working that he used all his life. As a student, he won prizes for drafting and sculpture. He haunted the Louvre and studied art history; the periods he favored most were the Archaic Greek, Egyptian, and Gothic.
In Paris, Lipchitz adopted the French first name "Jacques." He soon made contact with members of some of the most avant-garde artistic groups of the period, which were flourishing in Paris. The young emigre became friends with ground-breaking artists such as Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, and Diego Rivera. He later recounted anecdotes about the relationships between these figures and the influence they exerted on one another and their work. He recalled in particular one occasion when the artist Juan Gris told him "about a bunch of grapes he had seen in a painting by Picasso. The next day," recalled Lipchitz, "these grapes appeared in a painting by Gris, this time in a bowl; and the day after, the bowl appeared in a painting by Picasso."
Living in this environment, Lipchitz soon began to create Cubist sculpture. In 1912 he exhibited at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the Salon d'Automne with his first solo show held at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie L'Effort Moderne in Paris. Under the influence of Picasso and Alexander Archipenko in particular, Lipchitz began creating his first Cubist sculptures in 1913. This was a particularly formative phase for the sculptor, as it was for so many artists living in Paris at that time. He later claimed that the period during the First World War was a very exciting time in Paris, with artists, philosophers, and poets continually discussing and arguing about the work with which they were involved.
In 1916, Lipchitz and his new wife Berthe, a Russian poet, sat for one of Modigliani's best-known portraits. The couple was depicted in their Paris apartment, which had formerly been the home of the sculptor Constantin Brancusi. Curator Neal Benezra noted that Lipchitz and Modigliani, although close friends, could not have been more different. Lipchitz was "a model of artistic industry and traditional values whereas Modigliani was the stereotypical peintre maudit ("cursed" or "doomed painter"), tragically doomed by his own vices. In 1922 he was commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania to execute five bas-reliefs.
In 1925 Lipchitz became a French citizen, living and working on the outskirts of Paris in a house he commissioned from the radical Swiss-French, architect Le Corbusier (born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris). During the 1930s, Lipchitz's work was exhibited internationally and he received the gold medal for sculpture at the 1937 Paris Exposition. However, when the Germans occupied Paris in 1940, the artist's Jewish heritage placed him in grave danger and he was forced to flee to the United States, taking up residence in New York City.
He later said of this upheaval, "I had been forced to leave everything - my studio, my house, my collection - and I was reconciled to the idea that everything was lost or destroyed. I had begun a new life in the United States." The persecution of Jewish people by the Nazis caused Lipchitz to engage more actively in his religion and in his later years he sought the spiritual help of a Rabbi. Lipchitz eventually found some religious catharsis through the sculpture that he created in the 1940s.
When they visited Paris for an exhibition after World War II, his wife Berthe informed Lipchitz that she didn't wish to return to the USA. The couple was subsequently divorced and he continued to live in America, settling in Hastings-on-Hudson, a northern suburb of New York City. Soon after, he met and married Yulla Haberstadt, a sculptor from Berlin. In 1958, he suffered a major hemorrhage due to stomach cancer. Although he survived it, the illness comprised a significant setback for the artist. However, he continued to produce art until his death on the Italian island of Capri in 1973, where he had a villa and studio near a respected foundry. After his death his body was flown to Jerusalem for burial.
In Jacques's later years Lipchitz became more involved in his Jewish faith, even referring to himself as a "religious Jew" in an interview in 1970. He began abstaining from work on Shabbat and put on Tefillin daily, at the urging of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson.
Views
Jacques Lipchitz produced muscular, expressive works exploring biblical and mythological stories and such universal human themes as fidelity, love, and motherhood. For Lipchitz, Cubism was a form of emancipation from preceding artistic movements, as his angular, vigorously modeled forms attest.
Quotations:
“I never deserted the subject, even in my most abstract, cubist sculptures because I have always believed that there must be communication between the artist and the spectator.”
Membership
In 1915 Jacques Lipchitz joined the group "Esprit Nouveau."
Connections
In 1925 Lipchitz married Berthe Kirosser. When they visited Paris for an exhibition after World War II, his wife Berthe informed Lipchitz that she didn't wish to return to the USA. The couple was subsequently divorced and he continued to live in America, settling in Hastings-on-Hudson, a northern suburb of New York City. Soon after, he met and married Yulla Haberstadt, a sculptor from Berlin.