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拍品专文
Pierre Levai has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
After moving to Paris in 1909, Lipchitz quickly joined the artistic communities of Montmartre and Montparnasse which included a young Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, and Amedeo Modigliani. In Paris during the First World War, artists had few opportunities to sell their works, except at very low prices. The dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who championed the works of Picasso, Braque and Gris, had to leave France because he was a German national, and his inventory was held by the French state. The antiquities dealer Léonce Rosenberg moved in to fill the gap, and began signing the cubists to contracts, by which he had exclusive right to their output in exchange for a monthly stipend.
Jacques Lipchitz signed a contract with him in 1916, for 300 francs a month, the first security he had ever known. The arrangement also helped the artist to interact with other progressive painters and writers affiliated with Rosenberg's Galerie de l'Effort Moderne. He met Gris in 1916. In his memoirs Lipchitz wrote, 'I remember many sessions at Juan Gris's studio participated in by such people as the mathematician Princet, the poets Reverdy, Jacob, and Huidobro, in which arguments raged continually' (in My Life in Sculpture, New York, 1972, p. 39). These exchanges encouraged Lipchitz to experiment in painting. He acknowledged only one finished oil painting (ibid., p. 50), but executed others in tempera or gouache, including the present work. In these works Lipchitz absorbed the lessons of the war time cubist manner that was later called "synthetic" cubism, which had been inaugurated by the papiers collés of Picasso and Braque, and characterized by the layering of flat planes of local colour, and an emerging classical sensibility.
With the onslaught of German bombings in Paris in 1918, Lipchitz and his wife Berthe moved to Beaulieu-le-Loches where they temporarily shared a house with Gris and his wife. Frustrated by the restrictions on his ability to produce sculpture in his new setting, Lipchitz turned his attention to gouaches, such as the present composition, as well as carving in stone.
Femme cubiste depicts the figure of a woman, likely referencing the theme of the Seated bather or Femme lisant - which he treated in sculptural form - with the diagonals through the centre suggesting the same twisting arms and legs, balancing the centre of gravity of the figure. In his classical figure sculptures that followed in 1918-1919, which some ascribe to the rappel à ordre of the post-World War One era, Lipchitz stated he was “seeking effects that were both rich in their complexity and controlled in their simplicity. Once again I believe that these evoke the living human figure into which the forms were translated, while maintaining the purity of those forms” (ibid., pp. 46 & 49). He mingled curving planes–“to create effects of interior or negative space”–with a renewed emphasis on frontality. “I was again doing something comparable to the Greek and Egyptian statues which were among my first loves” (ibid., pp. 50 & 51). Femme cubiste therefore represents both the modern and the ancient in its timeless sense of monumental structure revealed through simplified, avant-garde means.
After moving to Paris in 1909, Lipchitz quickly joined the artistic communities of Montmartre and Montparnasse which included a young Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, and Amedeo Modigliani. In Paris during the First World War, artists had few opportunities to sell their works, except at very low prices. The dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who championed the works of Picasso, Braque and Gris, had to leave France because he was a German national, and his inventory was held by the French state. The antiquities dealer Léonce Rosenberg moved in to fill the gap, and began signing the cubists to contracts, by which he had exclusive right to their output in exchange for a monthly stipend.
Jacques Lipchitz signed a contract with him in 1916, for 300 francs a month, the first security he had ever known. The arrangement also helped the artist to interact with other progressive painters and writers affiliated with Rosenberg's Galerie de l'Effort Moderne. He met Gris in 1916. In his memoirs Lipchitz wrote, 'I remember many sessions at Juan Gris's studio participated in by such people as the mathematician Princet, the poets Reverdy, Jacob, and Huidobro, in which arguments raged continually' (in My Life in Sculpture, New York, 1972, p. 39). These exchanges encouraged Lipchitz to experiment in painting. He acknowledged only one finished oil painting (ibid., p. 50), but executed others in tempera or gouache, including the present work. In these works Lipchitz absorbed the lessons of the war time cubist manner that was later called "synthetic" cubism, which had been inaugurated by the papiers collés of Picasso and Braque, and characterized by the layering of flat planes of local colour, and an emerging classical sensibility.
With the onslaught of German bombings in Paris in 1918, Lipchitz and his wife Berthe moved to Beaulieu-le-Loches where they temporarily shared a house with Gris and his wife. Frustrated by the restrictions on his ability to produce sculpture in his new setting, Lipchitz turned his attention to gouaches, such as the present composition, as well as carving in stone.
Femme cubiste depicts the figure of a woman, likely referencing the theme of the Seated bather or Femme lisant - which he treated in sculptural form - with the diagonals through the centre suggesting the same twisting arms and legs, balancing the centre of gravity of the figure. In his classical figure sculptures that followed in 1918-1919, which some ascribe to the rappel à ordre of the post-World War One era, Lipchitz stated he was “seeking effects that were both rich in their complexity and controlled in their simplicity. Once again I believe that these evoke the living human figure into which the forms were translated, while maintaining the purity of those forms” (ibid., pp. 46 & 49). He mingled curving planes–“to create effects of interior or negative space”–with a renewed emphasis on frontality. “I was again doing something comparable to the Greek and Egyptian statues which were among my first loves” (ibid., pp. 50 & 51). Femme cubiste therefore represents both the modern and the ancient in its timeless sense of monumental structure revealed through simplified, avant-garde means.