Jacques Lipchitz

Yulla Lipchitz, New York
Irving Galleries, Palm Beach
Acquired from the above in 1996

Alan Wilkinson, The Sculpture of Jacques Lipchitz, A Catalogue Raisonné, Volume I, The Paris Years, New York, 1996, no. 88, illustrated p. 51

Minor abrasion at the top of the figure's left arm. A few minor nicks to the surface. Surface is clean. Work is in excellent condition. Please note: This lot and that which follows it are printed in inverse order in the small-format catalogue which accompanies our catalogue. Please refer to our main catalogue, or the e-Catalogue available online, for the correct order in which the works will be auctioned (Lot 123 will be Jacques Lipchitz, Arlequin à la clarinette and lot 124 will be Giorgio de Chirico, Piazza d'Italia).
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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This large sculpture of a standing harlequin playing a clarinet was conceived in 1919, ten years after Lipchitz's arrival in Paris from Vilna.  Once in Paris, Lipchitz enrolled first at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and then at the Academie Julian, where his curriculum included life drawing and stone carving.  The academic foundations of his artistic training lend his work a mastery of the classical stillness in the Maillolesque tradition. 

 

By 1913, Lipchitz had already begun to move away from his academic roots.  He had recently become acquainted with a number of leading figures of the Parisian avant-garde who introduced him to new artistic interpretations, including the techniques of Cubism.  Lipchitz's close study of the Cubist works of Picasso, Braque and Gris soon influenced his own works: his sculptures of this period are characterized by a richly broken up surface, with figures being represented as if seen from many angles and perspectives.  His remarkable translation of the elusive spatial ambiguities of pictorial Cubism into an independent and engaging three-dimensional language prompted the art historian E. H. Ramsden to describe Lipchitz as having "best realized the possibilities of Cubism as a sculptural form" (Alfred Werner, Lipchitz: The Cubist Period 1913-1930, (exhibition catalogue), New York, Marlborough-Gersen Gallery, 1968). 

 

Arlequin à la clarinette comes from a series of standing figures playing musical instruments, a theme borrowed from the commedia dell'arte that had become common currency in the work of Picasso, Gris and many of their contemporaries.  Lipchitz revisited works from this series as well as a number of his other sculptures of 1915-1920 in the early 1970s, executing eight recorded sculptures in marble which directly relate to his early Cubist works. Two of these eight marble sculptures are currently in public collections: Baigneuse (The Israel Museum, Jerusalem) and Baigneuse Assise (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).