ALEXANDER ARCHIPENKO | Walking

Acquired from the artist in 1960

Geneva, Musée Rath, Art du XXe siècle: Collections Genevoises, 1973, no. 40, illustrated in the catalogue 

Iwan Goll, Theodor Däubler & Blaise Cendrars, Archipenko Album, Potsdam, 1921, illustration of the terracotta pl. 14

Roland Schacht, "Archipenko, Belling und Westheim" in Der Sturm, vol. 40, no. 5, Berlin, May 1923, illustration of another cast p. 75

Roland Schacht, "Alexander Archipenko" in Sturm-Bilderbücher II, Berlin, 1924, illustration of another cast pl. 10

Alfred H. Barr, Cubism & Abstract Art, New York, 1974, illustration of another cast pl. 93

Alexander Archipenko, Archipenko, Fifty Creative Years, 1908-1958, New York, 1960, illustration of another cast pl. 174

Guy Habasque, "Archipenko" in L'Oeil, no. 78, June 1961, illustration of another cast pl. 41

Giovanni Sangiorgi, "La Pittura Scultorea di Archipenko" in Civiltà della Macchine, vol. XI, no. 5, September-October 1963, illustration of another cast p. 36

Giovanni Sangiorgi, Gino Severini & Alexander Archipenko, Alexander Archipenko, Rome, 1963, illustration of another cast pl. 4

Robert Rosenblum, Cubism & Twentieth Century Art, New York, 1967, illustration of another cast pl. 190

Nicholas Wadley, Cubism, London & New York, 1970, illustration of another cast pl. 136

Albert E. Elsen, Origins of Modern Sculpture, New York, 1974, illustration of another cast pl. 120

Donald Karshan, "Les Révolutions d'Alexandre Archipenko" in Plaisirs de France, no. 421, July 1974, illustration of another cast pl. 11

Donald Karshan, Archipenko, The Sculpture & Graphic Art, Including a Print Catalogue Raisonné, Boulder, Colorado, 1975, illustration of another cast p. 26

Katherine Michaelsen, Archipenko: A Study of the Early Works 1908-1921, New York, 1977, illustration of the terracotta pl. 88 (dated 1918-19)

Alexander Archipenko Erbe, Werke von 1908 bis 1963 aus dem testamentarischen Vermächtis (exhibition catalogue), Moderne Galerie des Saarland-Museums, Saarbrücken, 1982, no. 9, illustration of another cast p. 29

Sara Cornell, Art: A History of Changing Style, Oxford, 1983, illustrated p. 396 (titled Walking Woman)

Donald Karshan, Archipenko: Sculpture, Drawings & Prints 1908-1963, Danville, Kentucky, 1985, p. 33, illustrations of another cast pp. 45-47

Moderne Galerie des Saarland-Museums, ed., Alexander Archipenko Erbe, Werke von 1908 bis 1963 aus dem testamentarischen Vermächtnis, vol. I, Saarbrücken, 1986, illustrations of another cast pp. 4, 29 & 33; this cast mentioned p. 28

Alexander Archipenko, The Creative Process: Drawings, Reliefs and Related Sculpture (exhibition catalogue), Rachel Adler Gallery, New York, 1993, illustration of another cast n.p.

George H. Hamilton, Painting & Sculpture in Europe 1880-1940, Middlesex, 1993, illustration of another cast p. 270 

Anette Barth, Alexander Archipenkos plastisches Oeuvre, vol. II, Frankfurt, 1997, no. 40, illustration of another cast p. 89

Judi Freeman, The Fridart Collection: Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Modern Masterworks, London, 1998, illustrated in color p. 241

Frances Archipenko Gray, My Life with Alexander Archipenko, Munich, 2014, illustration of another cast in situ at the Saarbrücken vernissage in 1960 p. 118

In the introduction to Archipenko's first one-man exhibition in 1912, Guillaume Apollinaire comments that "Archipenko builds realities. His art approaches absolute sculpture more and more closely" (G. Apollinaire, Introduction to Archipenko's First One-Man Exhibition, Folkwang Museum, Hagen, 1912). In the present work, we see Archipenko distilling the human figure into weighty geometric forms that resonate with Cubist ideals. Walking is of particular note in its revolutionary use of negative space. According to George Heard Hamilton "The striding female figure, its posture not unlike Boccioni's Unique Forms of Continuity in Space of the next year, is treated as a series of interlocking convex and concave surfaces. The sculptural reality of the interior forms is made doubly clear by the empty space which stand for the head and body. This is the first instance in modern sculpture of the use of a hole to signify more than a void, in fact the opposite of a void, because by recalling the original volume the hole acquires a shape and structure of its own" (G. H. Hamilton, op. cit., p. 271).

Archipenko was at his most productive when living in France from 1909-20, the period from which this work dates; Walking is a quintessential sculpture from this hugely innovative time in the artist's life. The forms in the present work are simpler, more generalized and monumental in concept. Archipenko conceived this sculpture at the height of the Cubist frenzy in Paris, and it is clear that many of the ideals of the main protagonists of this movement greatly influenced this particular work. As Katherine Jánszky Michaelsen comments, "In their search for alternatives to Impressionism, painters and sculptors alike employed these 'primitive' sources to arrive at the new vocabulary of clear massive forms that became the point of departure for Cubism" (K. Jánszky Michaelsen & N. Guralnik, eds., Alexander Archipenko, A Centennial Tribute (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986, p. 20). 

The authenticity of this work has kindly been confirmed by Frances Archipenko Gray.