Lot 198
  • 198

JACQUES LIPCHITZ | L’acrobate à cheval

Estimate
350,000 - 450,000 GBP
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Description

  • Jacques Lipchitz
  • L’acrobate à cheval
  • inscribed J. Lipchitz, dated 14, numbered 6/7 and stamped with the foundry mark C. Valsuani Cire Perdue 
  • bronze
  • height: 54cm., 21 1/4 in.
  • Conceived in plaster in 1914 and cast in bronze in a numbered edition of 7 during the artist's lifetime.

Provenance

Mr & Mrs Maurice J. Speiser, Philadelphia (acquired from the artist. Sold: Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, 26-27th January 1944, lot 112, titled Circus Rider)
Buchholz Galleries, New York (purchased at the above sale)
Himan Brown, New York (sold: Christie's, New York, 16th May 1990, lot 375)
Marlborough Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2007 

Exhibited

New York, Marlborough Gallery, Jacques Lipchitz: The Paris Years, 1966, no. 7, illustrated in the catalogue
New York, Marlborough Gallery, Jacques Lipchitz: Sculpture and Drawings 1912-1972, 2004, no. 4, illustrated in the catalogue
Boulogne-Billancourt, Musée des années 30, Lipchitz: Les années françaises, 1910-1940, 2005, no. 5, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Literature

Roger Vitrac, Jacques Lipchitz, Paris, 1929, illustration of another cast p. 21
The Sculpture of Jacques Lipchitz (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis & Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 1954-55, illustration of another cast p. 24
Abraham M. Hammacher, Jacques Lipchitz: His Sculpture, New York, 1960, illustration of another cast p. 37
Jacques Lipchitz: A Retrospective Selected by the Artist (exhibition catalogue), UCLA Art Galleries, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Art; Denver Art Museum; Fort Worth Art Center; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Des Moines Art Center; Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1963-64, illustration of another cast p. 21
Harold Osborne, Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Art, Oxford, 1988, illustration of another cast, p. 329
Alan G. Wilkinson, The Sculpture of Jacques Lipchitz: A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1996, vol. I, no. 17, illustrations of another cast pp. 39 & 120

Condition

Please contact the Impressionist and Modern Art Department (Phoebe.Liu@sothebys.com) for the condition report for this lot.
"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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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Catalogue Note

In 1909 at the age of eighteen, attracted to the unparalleled artistic and bohemian energy of Europe’s artistic centre, Jacques Lipchitz arrived in Paris. By 1912, the artist was living in Montparnasse where he encountered many of the principal members of the Parisian avant-garde including Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Jacques Lipchitz’s early sculpture, created between 1911-14, echoes the sophisticated simplification prevalent in early Parisian modernism, pairing the classical tradition of Antoine Bourdelle and Aristide Maillol with the techniques of young Cubists such as Raymond Duchamp-Villon. Marrying the medieval, the baroque and the primitive with the modern tenants of Cubism, Lipchitz played a crucial and original role in the evolution of early Cubist sculpture in France. ‘What he [Lipchitz] did in 1913 and 1914 marked, in its closed form and its conciseness, the great moment in which he positively emerged as a sculptor’ (Abraham M. Hammacher, quoted in Jacques Lipchitz, My Life in Sculpture, New York, 1972, p. 16).

The rapid development of Lipchitz’s early artistic practice is characterised by his complex experimentation with the deconstruction of form in a fundamentally solid medium. Illustrating the intricacy of this task, praising the significance of the present work and Femme au serpent from 1913, Hammacher continues, these sculptures ‘represent the most important advance of his work of 1912. The sensitive contour of the body rendered by a flowing line has been abandoned for strong articulation into parts. The transitions are sharply accented, the melodious quality of the line had disappeared, and a hard rhythm develops. The mass is sometimes rounded, sometimes reduced to angular surfaces’ (op. cit., p. 25).

Presenting the circular mirrored forms of an arched acrobat atop a striding horse in the Cirque Medrano, Lipchitz engages with a spectacle that ‘resulted from the passion that all of us had for the wonderful French circus of this period’ (Jacques Lipchitz, My Life in Sculpture, New York, 1972, p. 18). Musing on the work, Lipchitz notes that whilst ‘There is no particular stylistic relationship…the idea for the subject may have derived from Seurat’s circus scenes’ (Jacques Lipchitz, My Life in Sculpture, New York, 1972, p. 18). L’acrobate à cheval, balances the artist’s archaising stylisation with the modern tenets of Cubism and demonstrates the tension between past and future, the concern in Lipchitz’s early œuvre. Testament to the importance of the work, the original patinated plaster cast is housed in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and another bronze cast from the edition is in the collection of the Princeton Art Museum in New Jersey on loan from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation.



The authenticity of this work has kindly been confirmed by Pierre Levai.