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Lot Essay
Frances Archipenko Gray has confirmed the authenticity of this sculpture.
An extremely important example of Archipenko's early work, Porteuse is especially significant as it is the only surviving cubist carving by the artist and one of only three works carved in stone from this early period. The other examples are Portrait of Mrs. Kemenev (Landesmuseum, Hanover; fig. 1) and Suzanne (Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena) which are quite substantially different in style from this cubist example. Porteuse was exhibited in several early and important shows, including Archipenko's first one-man exhibition in Hagen at the Museum Folkwang in the beginning of 1913. "Specific Cubist features begin to appear in Archipenko's sculptures of the years 1911 and 1912," Katherine Jánszky Michaelsen has pointed out, noting particularly the "angular fragmentation of planes that derives from similar effects in cubist painting" (in op. cit., p. 23). Archipenko's work during these years often straddled the line between relief and free-standing sculpture. In Porteuse we see a fully formed sculpture in the round, the faceted elements demonstrating the influence of both Cubist collage and Futurist sculpture.
"To invent!" Archipenko exclaimed two months before his death. "Does anything more important exist? In truth, I don't think so" (in Y. Taillandier, "Conversation avec Archipenko," XX Sicle, vol. 25, no. 22, Christmas 1963). The interview "begins and ends with Archipenko's credo: the artist's most precious faculty is invention," Michaelsen has remarked; and over a lifetime spent in relentless pursuit of "invention," Archipenko established himself among the foremost sculptors of the international avant-garde (in Alexander Archipenko: A Centennial Tribute, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1986, p. 17). In the radical innovations of his sculpture between 1908--the year he left Russia for Paris--and 1914, Archipenko advanced a revolutionary restructuring of sculpture's visual syntax, transforming the vanguard language of Cubism into a new and unprecedented approach to sculptural mass.
"For a young artist with limited formal training to catapult himself into a position of prominence within a few years of his arrival in a city where a major revolution in the visual arts was in full swing was an extraordinary accomplishment," Jaroslaw Leshko has observed (in Alexander Archipenko: Vision and Continuity, exh. cat., Ukrainian Museum, New York, 2005, p. 48). Indeed, in the flourishing spirit of experimentation that surrounded the city's avant-garde, from the Sunday salons of the Duchamp brothers to the Cubist gatherings in the studios of Le Fauconnier and Gleizes, Archipenko's precocious talent was warmly welcomed. Archipenko's response to the Cubist paradigm of shifting viewpoints and planar faceting would fully mature by 1914, a year that was, as Guy Habasque has suggested, "perhaps the most fecund of his whole career" (in Archipenko: International Visionary, Washington, D.C., 1969, p. 17).
(fig. 1) Portrait of Mrs. Kemenev, stone, 1909. Landesmuseum Galerie, Hanover, Germany.
An extremely important example of Archipenko's early work, Porteuse is especially significant as it is the only surviving cubist carving by the artist and one of only three works carved in stone from this early period. The other examples are Portrait of Mrs. Kemenev (Landesmuseum, Hanover; fig. 1) and Suzanne (Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena) which are quite substantially different in style from this cubist example. Porteuse was exhibited in several early and important shows, including Archipenko's first one-man exhibition in Hagen at the Museum Folkwang in the beginning of 1913. "Specific Cubist features begin to appear in Archipenko's sculptures of the years 1911 and 1912," Katherine Jánszky Michaelsen has pointed out, noting particularly the "angular fragmentation of planes that derives from similar effects in cubist painting" (in op. cit., p. 23). Archipenko's work during these years often straddled the line between relief and free-standing sculpture. In Porteuse we see a fully formed sculpture in the round, the faceted elements demonstrating the influence of both Cubist collage and Futurist sculpture.
"To invent!" Archipenko exclaimed two months before his death. "Does anything more important exist? In truth, I don't think so" (in Y. Taillandier, "Conversation avec Archipenko," XX Sicle, vol. 25, no. 22, Christmas 1963). The interview "begins and ends with Archipenko's credo: the artist's most precious faculty is invention," Michaelsen has remarked; and over a lifetime spent in relentless pursuit of "invention," Archipenko established himself among the foremost sculptors of the international avant-garde (in Alexander Archipenko: A Centennial Tribute, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1986, p. 17). In the radical innovations of his sculpture between 1908--the year he left Russia for Paris--and 1914, Archipenko advanced a revolutionary restructuring of sculpture's visual syntax, transforming the vanguard language of Cubism into a new and unprecedented approach to sculptural mass.
"For a young artist with limited formal training to catapult himself into a position of prominence within a few years of his arrival in a city where a major revolution in the visual arts was in full swing was an extraordinary accomplishment," Jaroslaw Leshko has observed (in Alexander Archipenko: Vision and Continuity, exh. cat., Ukrainian Museum, New York, 2005, p. 48). Indeed, in the flourishing spirit of experimentation that surrounded the city's avant-garde, from the Sunday salons of the Duchamp brothers to the Cubist gatherings in the studios of Le Fauconnier and Gleizes, Archipenko's precocious talent was warmly welcomed. Archipenko's response to the Cubist paradigm of shifting viewpoints and planar faceting would fully mature by 1914, a year that was, as Guy Habasque has suggested, "perhaps the most fecund of his whole career" (in Archipenko: International Visionary, Washington, D.C., 1969, p. 17).
(fig. 1) Portrait of Mrs. Kemenev, stone, 1909. Landesmuseum Galerie, Hanover, Germany.