Seated Figure - Bilbao Fine Arts Museum

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Seated Figure

Lipchitz, Jacques

Druskininkai, Lithuania, 22/08/1891-Capri, Italy, 26/05/1973

Bronze

87 x 21.3 x 16.5 cm

JLipchitz (on the reverse, at the base)

1915

20st century. First quarter

03/26

Acquired in 2003

This cast bronze work dates from the peak creative period of the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz in 1915, after his sojourn in Spain in 1914 in the company of the Mexican painter Diego Rivera, whom he had met the previous year in Paris. Rivera had made a Cubist portrait of Lipchitz, as he had also done of his studio neighbour, the Italian Amedeo Modigliani. On Montparnasse, Lipchitz shared the interests and projects of Picasso and Braque, the initiators of Cubism, as an artistic revolution as opposed to pictorial composition, which had been based on central perspective since the Renaissance, and he helped formulate the foundations of the Cubist vocabulary in sculpture. More than a style, Cubism is a gateway which opened up to him a philosophy of looking at shape in order to later model it in his own way. He was also interested in the meaning of the totem in what was called "primitive" art-in 1913 he bought a kind of wooden cup carved in Dahomey-and in the anthropomorphic obelisks of the Scythians, like the Kurgan stelae from the Bronze Age.

On his vacation to Mallorca with Rivera, Lipchitz began his first Cubist works, like Sailor with Guitar, as well as different wooden constructions. Back in Paris, he made a stone Head (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart), his first Cubist sculpture with a sense of organic life, with a feeling of monumental dignity simply by means of two intertwined sculptural planes. After that came an outstanding series of pieces resembling totem-buildings.

Seated Figure resembles architecture, like an organic obelisk made of masses that ascend like a skyscraper, yet also as a place of encounter between an interior and an exterior space. With works like this one, he attracted the attention of the three top architects of his day, who became his collectors and friends, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Pierre Chareau and Le Corbusier, who built his studio in 1925. The brothers Gustave and Auguste Perret, prominent engineers and builders, were also Lipchitz admirers. Chareau, who designed the famous Maison de Verre, and his wife Dollie (Louise Dyte), became steadfast supporters of the sculptor throughout his entire life, especially in his exile in New York, where he also interacted with architects. In 1953, Martin Lowenfish built his new studio in Hastings- on-Hudson, and in 1958 he worked with Philip Johnson on the Roofless Church in New Harmony (Indiana).

Lipchitz always closely identified with architects'views and always envisioned his sculptural pieces as necessarily referring to architecture. In fact, the evolution of his sculpture tends towards Bernini's Baroque movement. These pieces from 1915 were defined by the writer Waldemar George in the magazine L'Amour de l'Art (1921) as "architectural structures ... arrangements of forms created with a sense of composition, measure and balance which gives them the look of small, monumental style buildings". [Kosme de Barañano]

Selected bibliography

  • Jacques Lipchitz : dibujos y esculturas [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2003. pp. 19-20, n° cat. 15.
  • Jacques Lipchitz : dohaintza = donación = donation [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2005.
  • Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao : guía. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2006. p. 169.
  • Musée des Beaux Arts de Bilbao : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2006. p. 169.
  • Bilbao Fine Arts Museum : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2006. p. 169.
  • Adquisiciones 02/07 [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2007. pp. 52-53, n° cat. 17.
  • Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao : guía. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2011. p. 171, n° cat. 122.
  • Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa : gida. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2012. p. 171, n° cat. 122.
  • Musée des Beaux Arts de Bilbao : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2014. p. 171.
  • Bilbao Fine Arts Museum : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2014. p. 171.
  • 110 Years 110 Works [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 220-221, sin n° cat.
  • 110 Años 110 Obras [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 220-221, sin n° cat.
  • 110 Ans 110 Oeuvres [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 220-221, sin n° cat.
  • 110 Urte 110 Artelan [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 220-221, sin n° cat.
  • Genealogías del arte, o la historia del arte como arte visual [Cat. exp.]. Madrid, Fundación Juan March ; Museo Picasso Málaga, 2019. pp. 203, 458, n° cat. 102.