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Lot Essay
As a Russian-born Jew and a leading modernist sculptor, Lipchitz had good reason to fear the consequences of the German invasion of France in May 1940. He later recalled, "Friends of mine, the Chareaus, came one evening and said that Hitler was coming and they would not leave Paris without us. They left their car for us they saved me at the moment when Hitler was at the outskirts of Paris, because I was terrified and so paralyzed I could not make a move" (op. cit., pp. 140 and 143). Lipchitz and his wife Berthe drove to Vichy, and then traveled on to Toulouse, in the unoccupied zone, where they were relatively safe for the moment. With the assistance of friends in America, including curators at the Museum of Modern Art, Lipchitz and Berthe emigrated to the USA via Portugal, arriving in New York on 13 June 1941.
Lipchitz took an apartment at 42 Washington Square East, and found a studio at 2 East 3rd Street, near Madison Square. He then began working on Benediction, his first major sculpture since his arrival. He described the genesis of this subject in his memoirs:
Its source had to do with my flight from Paris. When we were in the Pyrenées in a small village, we learned that Paris had been occupied, tragic news for all of us. Suddenly the idea came to me to sing a sort of lullaby to Paris; and I thought, "Well, Paris will sleep now for a moment, but I hope it will not be too long, and I want to make a sculpture like a lullaby". I remember that when I had largely finished it, I had no title for it. I asked a friend, a lady, if she could think of a title and explained what I had in mind, and she suggested Benediction. It is still a lullaby, a woman who is in a sense playing on harp which is part of herself (op. cit., p. 156).
Benediction I, a uniquely cast bronze, is the first large version of this subject. Lipchitz noted that its forms are "relatively smooth and volumetric with a poetic, curvilinear flow. There are many different variants of Benediction for I was looking for something I could not quite realize. I intended it as a full length figure, but for some reason I could not finish the legs, so it became a torso. Perhaps this was a result of the fact that I felt at a certain moment it was complete in itself" (ibid). Wilkinson illustrates two small maquettes for Benediction, nos. 357 and 359, and three subsequent versions, done in 1943-1945, nos. 375, 376 and 397.
The curving, organic forms with openings seen in Benediction recall Lipchitz's "transparent" sculptures of the late 1920s. These ideas became the basis for many of Lipchitz's wartime sculptures, such as Prometheus Strangling the Vulture, The Birth of the Muses, and Song of Songs (W., nos. 379, 385 and 390). A.M. Hammacher wrote that "the new transparent forms are full of erotic and symbolic imagery, rich in linear expression, sometimes playful, sometimes grotesque, or with a heavier, more ritual emphasis, with a naturalness explicable only by the direct, unhindered working of the artist's creative powers (op. cit., p. 62).
Lipchitz took an apartment at 42 Washington Square East, and found a studio at 2 East 3rd Street, near Madison Square. He then began working on Benediction, his first major sculpture since his arrival. He described the genesis of this subject in his memoirs:
Its source had to do with my flight from Paris. When we were in the Pyrenées in a small village, we learned that Paris had been occupied, tragic news for all of us. Suddenly the idea came to me to sing a sort of lullaby to Paris; and I thought, "Well, Paris will sleep now for a moment, but I hope it will not be too long, and I want to make a sculpture like a lullaby". I remember that when I had largely finished it, I had no title for it. I asked a friend, a lady, if she could think of a title and explained what I had in mind, and she suggested Benediction. It is still a lullaby, a woman who is in a sense playing on harp which is part of herself (op. cit., p. 156).
Benediction I, a uniquely cast bronze, is the first large version of this subject. Lipchitz noted that its forms are "relatively smooth and volumetric with a poetic, curvilinear flow. There are many different variants of Benediction for I was looking for something I could not quite realize. I intended it as a full length figure, but for some reason I could not finish the legs, so it became a torso. Perhaps this was a result of the fact that I felt at a certain moment it was complete in itself" (ibid). Wilkinson illustrates two small maquettes for Benediction, nos. 357 and 359, and three subsequent versions, done in 1943-1945, nos. 375, 376 and 397.
The curving, organic forms with openings seen in Benediction recall Lipchitz's "transparent" sculptures of the late 1920s. These ideas became the basis for many of Lipchitz's wartime sculptures, such as Prometheus Strangling the Vulture, The Birth of the Muses, and Song of Songs (W., nos. 379, 385 and 390). A.M. Hammacher wrote that "the new transparent forms are full of erotic and symbolic imagery, rich in linear expression, sometimes playful, sometimes grotesque, or with a heavier, more ritual emphasis, with a naturalness explicable only by the direct, unhindered working of the artist's creative powers (op. cit., p. 62).