.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The Archipenko Foundation will include this work in the upcoming catalogue raisonné of sculptures by Alexander Archipenko.
In 1908, following the conclusion of his studies in Moscow, Archipenko moved to Paris, where he occupied a studio in Montparnasse. He began to exhibit in the Salon des Indépendants in 1910, and in the Salon d'Automne the following year. His earliest Paris sculptures show the archaic and primitivist character seen in progressive painting and sculpture during this period, which was largely due to the lingering influence of Gauguin and the discovery of tribal sculpture. This phase constituted a prelude to the actual emergence of full-fledged Cubism, in which the lessons implicit in Cézanne's paintings were finally and definitively realized, a stage in the accelerating process of modernism that became apparent in the Salons in 1911-1912. Archipenko frequented the meetings of the Puteaux Group, led by the Duchamp brothers--Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon--and participated in the important Section d'Or exhibition, the final, cohesive group event of the pre-war Cubist movement, in October 1912.
Executed during that momentous year, Madonna of the Rocks embodies a more fully developed degree of cubist expression than any of Archipenko's previous sculptures, and it was his most formally complex work to date. His modernist tendencies notwithstanding, Archipenko took the inspiration for his subject from Leonardo da Vinci's painting The Madonna of the Rocks, 1503-1506 (coll. National Gallery, London). Archipenko, as a young student, greatly admired Leonardo, and later in his career he emulated the Renaissance master's abilities as both artist and inventor. The Puteaux Group based its formal theories on the "golden section" of Pythagoras, as expounded in the writings of Leonardo. Archipenko's rendering of this subject is in no way a literal interpretation of the painting; it is instead an evocation of the tender qualities of maternal love, contrasted with the solid and durable material of plastic expression.
Archipenko modeled Madonna of the Rocks in plaster, which he painted red. Katherine J. Michaelsen has written, "Because the various elements--mother, infant, rocky setting--are not differentiated, the color undermines the representational character of the work. It transforms the sculpture into an object, independent of what it claims to represent" (in Alexander Archipenko: A Centenial Tribute, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986, pp. 23-24). The monumental aspect in Madonna of the Rocks stems from Archipenko's modeling of bulging, rotund volumes, which he contrasted with angular shapes, raised upon a classic pyramidal substructure. Albert E. Elsen noted that "he made the base seem generative of the form by its continuity with the spiraling figure, thereby predicting, if not influencing, the integrated design of base and sculpture in Boccioni's Development of a Bottle in Space [1912] and that of Duchamp Villon's Horse of 1914 (op. cit.).
The mingling of opposing plastic elements in Madonna of the Rocks recalls the juxtaposition of "hard" and "soft" forms in Fernand Léger's early cubist paintings, as in his series Fumées sur le toit, 1910-1912 (Bauquier, nos. 25-34). Léger was friendly with many of the Russian expatriate artists who were working in Paris--he delivered his two seminal lectures on contrasts of form to a mostly Russian audience at the Académie Marie Wassilieff in 1913 and 1914--and he was especially close to Archipenko during this period. Michaelsen relates that "When short of cash they would entertain in the streets, Archipenko singing Russian songs to Léger's accompaniment on the harp" (ibid., p. 19). They traded works, and Léger became the first owner of the painted plaster version of Madonna of the Rocks. The New York dealer Klaus Perls purchased the plaster from Léger's estate in 1960, and with this piece once again in hand, Archipenko supervised the casting of the present bronze version in an edition of six casts. Perls took possession of cast numbers 1/6 - 2/6, including the present sculpture, while the artist retained casts 4/6 - 6/6. In 1969, Perls and Frances Archipenko Gray, the sculptor's widow, jointly donated the plaster to The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
The present sculpture was known early on as La mère dans le rochers ("The Mother on the Rocks") and Woman and Child. Archipenko included the plaster in his book Fifty Creative Years (op. cit) under the title La mer dans les roches (where he dated it 1911), either misspelling "mère," or else playing on the similarity of the words "mer" and "mère, perhaps suggesting the play of waves on a rocky shore, again drawing attention to the contrast of soft, fluid forms with harder structural elements. Michaelsen has suggested that the present title was given at the time that Archipenko cast the bronze edition (cited in Alexander Archipenko: Vision and Continuity, exh. cat., The Ukrainian Museum, New York, 2005, p. 140, note 9). In view of Archipenko's reference to Leonardo, this is perhaps the most satisfactory title, and it is with this title that the sculpture is most often cited in exhibition catalogues and other literature.
In 1908, following the conclusion of his studies in Moscow, Archipenko moved to Paris, where he occupied a studio in Montparnasse. He began to exhibit in the Salon des Indépendants in 1910, and in the Salon d'Automne the following year. His earliest Paris sculptures show the archaic and primitivist character seen in progressive painting and sculpture during this period, which was largely due to the lingering influence of Gauguin and the discovery of tribal sculpture. This phase constituted a prelude to the actual emergence of full-fledged Cubism, in which the lessons implicit in Cézanne's paintings were finally and definitively realized, a stage in the accelerating process of modernism that became apparent in the Salons in 1911-1912. Archipenko frequented the meetings of the Puteaux Group, led by the Duchamp brothers--Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon--and participated in the important Section d'Or exhibition, the final, cohesive group event of the pre-war Cubist movement, in October 1912.
Executed during that momentous year, Madonna of the Rocks embodies a more fully developed degree of cubist expression than any of Archipenko's previous sculptures, and it was his most formally complex work to date. His modernist tendencies notwithstanding, Archipenko took the inspiration for his subject from Leonardo da Vinci's painting The Madonna of the Rocks, 1503-1506 (coll. National Gallery, London). Archipenko, as a young student, greatly admired Leonardo, and later in his career he emulated the Renaissance master's abilities as both artist and inventor. The Puteaux Group based its formal theories on the "golden section" of Pythagoras, as expounded in the writings of Leonardo. Archipenko's rendering of this subject is in no way a literal interpretation of the painting; it is instead an evocation of the tender qualities of maternal love, contrasted with the solid and durable material of plastic expression.
Archipenko modeled Madonna of the Rocks in plaster, which he painted red. Katherine J. Michaelsen has written, "Because the various elements--mother, infant, rocky setting--are not differentiated, the color undermines the representational character of the work. It transforms the sculpture into an object, independent of what it claims to represent" (in Alexander Archipenko: A Centenial Tribute, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986, pp. 23-24). The monumental aspect in Madonna of the Rocks stems from Archipenko's modeling of bulging, rotund volumes, which he contrasted with angular shapes, raised upon a classic pyramidal substructure. Albert E. Elsen noted that "he made the base seem generative of the form by its continuity with the spiraling figure, thereby predicting, if not influencing, the integrated design of base and sculpture in Boccioni's Development of a Bottle in Space [1912] and that of Duchamp Villon's Horse of 1914 (op. cit.).
The mingling of opposing plastic elements in Madonna of the Rocks recalls the juxtaposition of "hard" and "soft" forms in Fernand Léger's early cubist paintings, as in his series Fumées sur le toit, 1910-1912 (Bauquier, nos. 25-34). Léger was friendly with many of the Russian expatriate artists who were working in Paris--he delivered his two seminal lectures on contrasts of form to a mostly Russian audience at the Académie Marie Wassilieff in 1913 and 1914--and he was especially close to Archipenko during this period. Michaelsen relates that "When short of cash they would entertain in the streets, Archipenko singing Russian songs to Léger's accompaniment on the harp" (ibid., p. 19). They traded works, and Léger became the first owner of the painted plaster version of Madonna of the Rocks. The New York dealer Klaus Perls purchased the plaster from Léger's estate in 1960, and with this piece once again in hand, Archipenko supervised the casting of the present bronze version in an edition of six casts. Perls took possession of cast numbers 1/6 - 2/6, including the present sculpture, while the artist retained casts 4/6 - 6/6. In 1969, Perls and Frances Archipenko Gray, the sculptor's widow, jointly donated the plaster to The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
The present sculpture was known early on as La mère dans le rochers ("The Mother on the Rocks") and Woman and Child. Archipenko included the plaster in his book Fifty Creative Years (op. cit) under the title La mer dans les roches (where he dated it 1911), either misspelling "mère," or else playing on the similarity of the words "mer" and "mère, perhaps suggesting the play of waves on a rocky shore, again drawing attention to the contrast of soft, fluid forms with harder structural elements. Michaelsen has suggested that the present title was given at the time that Archipenko cast the bronze edition (cited in Alexander Archipenko: Vision and Continuity, exh. cat., The Ukrainian Museum, New York, 2005, p. 140, note 9). In view of Archipenko's reference to Leonardo, this is perhaps the most satisfactory title, and it is with this title that the sculpture is most often cited in exhibition catalogues and other literature.