Lot Essay
During the winter of 1916, Lipchitz agreed to a contract with Léonce Rosenberg. Rosenberg had previously dealt in ancient art, but during World War I moved to fill the void left when the French government declared the prominent modern dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler an enemy alien. For the first time in his career Lipchitz did not have to worry about money, and because of a nagging case of bursitis, he employed a stone carver to assist him in transforming his conceptions from clay to stone.
This group of works represents the period of greatest concentration and personal discovery in Lipchitz's development in Cubist sculpture. In the years of his friendship with Gris, between 1916 and 1919, Lipchitz's work reflects a different approach to Cubist sculpture. That is to say, he made his subjects -- bathers, sailors, a pierrot playing a clarinet, men playing guitars -- less abstract and more legible (as Gris was doing), while emphasizing their mass. In these figures, Lipchitz used chunky, geometricized forms, which he articulated, in order to evoke volume, with some analytical faceting, a counter-lay of protruding and receding planes, and some curves. (D. Cooper, The Cubist Epoch, London, 1971, pp. 250 and 252)
In his autobiography, Lipchitz recognized the importance of the present work in the development of his use of cubism.
Although [Baigneuse assise] is extremely compact, there is a greater use of twisting diagonals and curvilinear forms suggesting a three-dimensional spiraling of the figure on an axis... While it is still in every way an organization of plastic masses and volumes, the sense of humanity gives it a specific personality, a brooding quality emphasized by the shadowed face framed in the heavy hanging locks of the hair... In this work I think I clearly achieved the kind of poetry which I felt to be essential to the total impact. (J. Lipchitz and H.H. Arnason, op. cit., p. 45)
In addition to the bronze edition, there is a plaster model for this sculpture in the Tate Gallery in London, and a stone carving in a private collection in New York.
This group of works represents the period of greatest concentration and personal discovery in Lipchitz's development in Cubist sculpture. In the years of his friendship with Gris, between 1916 and 1919, Lipchitz's work reflects a different approach to Cubist sculpture. That is to say, he made his subjects -- bathers, sailors, a pierrot playing a clarinet, men playing guitars -- less abstract and more legible (as Gris was doing), while emphasizing their mass. In these figures, Lipchitz used chunky, geometricized forms, which he articulated, in order to evoke volume, with some analytical faceting, a counter-lay of protruding and receding planes, and some curves. (D. Cooper, The Cubist Epoch, London, 1971, pp. 250 and 252)
In his autobiography, Lipchitz recognized the importance of the present work in the development of his use of cubism.
Although [Baigneuse assise] is extremely compact, there is a greater use of twisting diagonals and curvilinear forms suggesting a three-dimensional spiraling of the figure on an axis... While it is still in every way an organization of plastic masses and volumes, the sense of humanity gives it a specific personality, a brooding quality emphasized by the shadowed face framed in the heavy hanging locks of the hair... In this work I think I clearly achieved the kind of poetry which I felt to be essential to the total impact. (J. Lipchitz and H.H. Arnason, op. cit., p. 45)
In addition to the bronze edition, there is a plaster model for this sculpture in the Tate Gallery in London, and a stone carving in a private collection in New York.