Jacques Lipchitz

Marlborough Gallery, New York

Acquired from the above by the grandparents of the present owner on June 16, 1971

Jacques Lipchitz – Thirty three Semi-Automatics and Earlier Works (exhibition catalogue), Otto Gerson Fine Arts, New York, 1957, no. 41, illustration of another cast

Jacques Lipchitz (exhibition catalogue), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1958, no. 21, illustration of another cast

Jacques Lipchitz (exhibition catalogue), Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1959, no. 21

Jacques Lipchitz - Retrospective Sculpture and Drawing (exhibition catalogue), Boston University School of Fine & Applied Art, Boston, no. 5, illustration of another cast

Jacques Lipchitz, The cubist period, 1913-1930 (exhibition catalogue), Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York, 1968, no. 27, illustration of another cast

The Sculptures of Jacques Lipchitz (exhibition catalogue), Nationalgalerie Staatliche Museen, Berlin, 1970, no. 16

Jacques Lipchitz, My Life in Sculpture, London, 1972, no. 35, illustration of another cast p. 47 (as dating from 1917-1918)

A.M. Hammacher, Jacques Lipchitz, His Sculptures, New York, 1975, no. 26, illustration of another cast

Maurice Raynal, Jacques Lipchitz, Paris, n.d., illustration of the stone carving

Alan G. Wilkinson, The Sculpture of Jacques Lipchitz, a Catalogue Raisonné, the Paris Years, 1910-1940, vol. 1, New York, 1996, no. 67, illustration of the present cast p. 48 (measuring 36 in.)

Images of mandolin or guitar players figured largely in Lipchitz’s production during and after the First World War.  The subject was not uncommon among the Cubists, but Lipchitz was one of the few artists to render this figure as a man.  The gender choice is important to note, as the abstraction of the male body was a rare subject for artists of this era.  Lipchitz, however, fully explored the aesthetic potential of the masculine form, using broad, angular forms and sharp angles to render the powerful body. 

Lipchitz first rendered this figure in a stone version in 1917, and that sculpture is now in the collection of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.  He later had the sculpture cast in bronze in an edition of 7, and another cast from this edition is in the collection of the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. In his biography, the artist illustrated this very cast, number 3/7, on page 47.