.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Standing at over two meters high, Figure demonstrates Jacques Lipchitz’s distinctive form of cubist sculpture at the height of his career. Totemic, this work balances abstraction and representation, and stands both as a bold summation of the artist’s work up until this point as well as marking the beginning of his embrace of working on a monumental scale. Another cast resides today in The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Lipchitz spent the summer of 1926 in Ploumanach, on the Brittany coast. There, he became intrigued by the natural formations of the coastline—particularly the rocks as they descended into the sea. These dramatic natural surroundings, coupled with a moment of reflection for the artist, resulted in the creation of Figure.
Lipchitz vividly described the conception of this work: “I was, half unconsciously, working out the various ideas that had been coming together during the previous several years.” In the first “sketch” or maquette he made, he inserted a reclining figure in the top, ovoid portion of the figure, “but I must have begun to see this as a primitive totem, for in the next sketch I transformed the upper part into a head with an indication of staring eyes. This was the genesis of the great Figure…a work that summarized many of my ideas dating back to 1915. Specifically, it pulled together those different directions of massive, material frontality and of aerial openness in which I had been working during the 1920s. It is also very clearly a subject sculpture, an image with a specific and rather frightening personality. Although the Figure has been associated with African sculpture and the resemblance is apparent, it is now evident to me that it emerged, step by step, from findings I made in my cubist and protocubist sculpture over the previous fifteen years… From this point forward, I think I began to be concerned more explicitly with this question of monumentality in my sculpture and look at my maquettes with new eyes” (My Life in Sculpture, London, 1972, pp. 89-90).
This abstract figure shows how Lipchitz had harnessed negative space as an active component of his work at this time. Lipchitz had first developed this innovative and bold concept in 1925, the year before he conceived the present Figure. In works known as “transparents,” Lipchitz made bronze casts of skeletal constructions made from wax and cardboard. Composed of delicate pieces of interlocking bronze parts, these sculptures create a bold juxtaposition between the solid forms and the open space that surrounds them, integrating voids into the sculptural composition itself. He recalled of his sculptural discovery, “Suddenly, I found myself playing with space, with a kind of open, lyrical construction that was a revelation to me. I felt as though I were discovering an entirely new concept of sculpture as space, of the ethereal soul of the sculpture rather than its physical corporeality” (ibid., p. 86).
Lipchitz spent the summer of 1926 in Ploumanach, on the Brittany coast. There, he became intrigued by the natural formations of the coastline—particularly the rocks as they descended into the sea. These dramatic natural surroundings, coupled with a moment of reflection for the artist, resulted in the creation of Figure.
Lipchitz vividly described the conception of this work: “I was, half unconsciously, working out the various ideas that had been coming together during the previous several years.” In the first “sketch” or maquette he made, he inserted a reclining figure in the top, ovoid portion of the figure, “but I must have begun to see this as a primitive totem, for in the next sketch I transformed the upper part into a head with an indication of staring eyes. This was the genesis of the great Figure…a work that summarized many of my ideas dating back to 1915. Specifically, it pulled together those different directions of massive, material frontality and of aerial openness in which I had been working during the 1920s. It is also very clearly a subject sculpture, an image with a specific and rather frightening personality. Although the Figure has been associated with African sculpture and the resemblance is apparent, it is now evident to me that it emerged, step by step, from findings I made in my cubist and protocubist sculpture over the previous fifteen years… From this point forward, I think I began to be concerned more explicitly with this question of monumentality in my sculpture and look at my maquettes with new eyes” (My Life in Sculpture, London, 1972, pp. 89-90).
This abstract figure shows how Lipchitz had harnessed negative space as an active component of his work at this time. Lipchitz had first developed this innovative and bold concept in 1925, the year before he conceived the present Figure. In works known as “transparents,” Lipchitz made bronze casts of skeletal constructions made from wax and cardboard. Composed of delicate pieces of interlocking bronze parts, these sculptures create a bold juxtaposition between the solid forms and the open space that surrounds them, integrating voids into the sculptural composition itself. He recalled of his sculptural discovery, “Suddenly, I found myself playing with space, with a kind of open, lyrical construction that was a revelation to me. I felt as though I were discovering an entirely new concept of sculpture as space, of the ethereal soul of the sculpture rather than its physical corporeality” (ibid., p. 86).