Alexander Archipenko

Georges Vantongerloo, De Stijl, vol. II, 1918, no. 10, illustration of another cast pl. XVI
Fannina W. Haller, "Kandinsky, Archipenko, Chagall," Die Bildenden Künste, vol. IV, 1920, nos. 11-12, illustration of another cast p. 180
Theodor Däubler & Ivan Goll, Archipenko-Album, Potsdam, 1921, illustration of another cast pl. 5
Michel Seuphor, La sculpture du siècle, Neuchâtel, 1959, illustration of another cast p. 26
Alexander Archipenko, ed., Archipenko, Fifty Creative Years 1908-1958, New York, 1960, illustration of another cast pl. 142
Donald H. Karshan, ed., Archipenko International Visionary, Washington, 1969, illustration of another cast pp. 47 & 56, pl. 64
Donald H. Karshan, Archipenko, The Sculpture and Graphic Art, Tübingen, 1974, illustration of another cast pp. 10 & 149
Bernard Dorival, "Alexander Archipenko," Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire de l'Art Français, 1975 (Année 1974), no. 34, illustration of another cast p. 208
Katherine J. Michaelsen, Archipenko, A study of the Early Works 1908-20, New York, 1977, no. S52, illustration of another cast
Anette Barth, Alexander Archipenkos plastisches Oeuvre, vol. II, Frankfurt am Main, 1997, no. 56, illustration of the larger version p. 123
Michael Frank, "Return Engagement: An Eclectic Design for a Classic New York Apartment Evolves Over Two Decades," Architectural Digest, November 1998, illustrations of another cast 
pp. 246- 253

Black patina. Attached to a wooden base. There is some very minor patina rubbing at the tip of the figure's oar, as well as a few scattered pin-dots of accretion. There are a few minor nicks around the base, but otherwise the work is in excellent condition.
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Exhibited in the 1914 Cubist exhibition at the Salon des Indépendants, a cast of Archipenko's Gondolier garnered the praise of Guillaume Apollinaire, a voice of critical support for the artist and his Cubist affiliates, who stated, "I really pity anyone who remains indifferent to the charm and elegance of Archipenko's Gondolier..." (quoted in Katherine J. Michaelsen, Archipenko: A Study of the Early Works, New York, 1977, p. 97)  Today one of Archipenko's most famous models, casts of Gondolier are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Admired for its subtle monumentality and its clever elision of the gondolier's arm and oar, the present work proposes a sculptural model for a simultaneous velocity and stasis, or, as sculptor Georges Vantongerloo elegantly notes in an analysis of the work for De Stijl in 1918, a revolutionary model for, "a perpetual and invisible movement" (diagrammed in Donald Karshan, Archipenko: The Sculpture and Graphic Art, Tübingen, 1974, p. 23). (see fig. 1)

As is characteristic of many sculptures conceived during Archipenko's lauded early years in Paris, Gondolier culls a streamlined geometric and spatial composition from exemplary forms in motion.  Taking dancers, boxers, and, here, the gondolier, as his sculptural subject matter, Archipenko transposes dynamics of Futurism onto the ludic perceptual games of an unfolding Cubist sculptural paradigm. The result of Archipenko's flirtation with these two trademarks of the 20^th Century avant-garde is a sculpture
celebrating the efficiency and kineticism of simplified forms.  

Fig. 1 Vantongerloo's analytical description of Gondolier in De Stijl, January 1918.