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Lot Essay
A study in balance and rhythm, geometric curves and sinuous lines, Ecuyère à l’éventail illustrates the evolving sculptural vocabulary of Jacques Lipchitz in the years leading up to the First World War. At this time Lipchitz was experimenting with new forms and sculptural ideas, in response to the stimulating environment of the Parisian avant-garde. The artist had arrived in the French capital in 1909 at the age of eighteen, drawn like so many others to the unprecedented artistic and bohemian energy of Montparnasse. By 1913 he was recognised as a precocious talent within the cosmopolitan School of Paris, whose leading figures included Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Amedeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall and above all Pablo Picasso, whom Lipchitz met for the first time that year. Inspired by the climate of imaginative cross-fertilization fostered by this radical group of international artists, Lipchitz began to chart a ground-breaking path toward Cubist volumes in his sculpture.
In Ecuyère à l’éventail, Lipchitz focuses on the slender form of an equestrian performer, dressed in a corseted leotard, the laces delicately described as they run up her back, its decorative trim picked out in geometric chevrons along the hems. This is one of a pair of sculptures that centre on circus subjects from this period, alongside the dramatically posed L’Acrobat à cheval (conceived in 1914), the inspiration for which Lipchitz traced back to Georges Seurat’s Le Cirque, and the graceful acrobatic feat of the equestrienne as she canters around the circus ring. Venues such as the Cirque Fernando, one of four permanent circuses in Paris, had been a favourite subject for artists such as Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Seurat since the 1870s, and its popularity continued unabated into the twentieth century. The flamboyant theatricality and outlandish spectacle of its acrobats and performers provided rich visual inspiration for its artist-patrons, and in its imaginative choreography Lipchitz, too, found a dramatic subject for his evolving sculptural language.
Here, Lipchitz portrays the lithe form of the performer in a relaxed contrapposto stance, a small fan clutched in her left hand, as if she is awaiting her moment to step into the ring and face the audience. Describing her figure in simplified contours, the artist creates a dynamic S-curve that runs through her body in a continuous line, elongating certain features such as her neck to accentuate the effect and imbue the sculpture with a sense of the equestrienne’s grace and elegance. Perhaps most intriguingly, Lipchitz adopts different approaches to describing the body in alternate sections of the work, contrasting the rounded, convex curves of her left-hand side against the more angular, faceted treatment of her right arm and leg, and the geometric planes of her facial features.
As the artist explained, this approach marked a crucial step on his path towards realising a cubist style of sculpture. “At this time, late in 1913, I had seen little sculpture that could be considered purely cubist… I was really acquainted with Cubism only in terms of the paintings of Picasso, Braque, Juan Gris and others,” he wrote. “Thus, I had to work toward Cubism in sculpture entirely on my own; and perhaps the greatest revelation that led me in this direction was the importance of light for sculpture. I suddenly discovered that volume in sculpture is created by light and shadow. Volume is light. In a smoothly rounded or curvilinear sculpture the light washes over the surface and may even diminish or destroy the sense of volume, the sense of third dimension. When the forms of the sculpture are angular, when the surface is broken by deep interpenetrations and contrasts, light can work to bring out the truly sculptural qualities. As I said, this was a tremendous revelation and it has affected my attitude towards sculpture ever since” (ibid., p. 17).
In Ecuyère à l’éventail, Lipchitz focuses on the slender form of an equestrian performer, dressed in a corseted leotard, the laces delicately described as they run up her back, its decorative trim picked out in geometric chevrons along the hems. This is one of a pair of sculptures that centre on circus subjects from this period, alongside the dramatically posed L’Acrobat à cheval (conceived in 1914), the inspiration for which Lipchitz traced back to Georges Seurat’s Le Cirque, and the graceful acrobatic feat of the equestrienne as she canters around the circus ring. Venues such as the Cirque Fernando, one of four permanent circuses in Paris, had been a favourite subject for artists such as Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Seurat since the 1870s, and its popularity continued unabated into the twentieth century. The flamboyant theatricality and outlandish spectacle of its acrobats and performers provided rich visual inspiration for its artist-patrons, and in its imaginative choreography Lipchitz, too, found a dramatic subject for his evolving sculptural language.
Here, Lipchitz portrays the lithe form of the performer in a relaxed contrapposto stance, a small fan clutched in her left hand, as if she is awaiting her moment to step into the ring and face the audience. Describing her figure in simplified contours, the artist creates a dynamic S-curve that runs through her body in a continuous line, elongating certain features such as her neck to accentuate the effect and imbue the sculpture with a sense of the equestrienne’s grace and elegance. Perhaps most intriguingly, Lipchitz adopts different approaches to describing the body in alternate sections of the work, contrasting the rounded, convex curves of her left-hand side against the more angular, faceted treatment of her right arm and leg, and the geometric planes of her facial features.
As the artist explained, this approach marked a crucial step on his path towards realising a cubist style of sculpture. “At this time, late in 1913, I had seen little sculpture that could be considered purely cubist… I was really acquainted with Cubism only in terms of the paintings of Picasso, Braque, Juan Gris and others,” he wrote. “Thus, I had to work toward Cubism in sculpture entirely on my own; and perhaps the greatest revelation that led me in this direction was the importance of light for sculpture. I suddenly discovered that volume in sculpture is created by light and shadow. Volume is light. In a smoothly rounded or curvilinear sculpture the light washes over the surface and may even diminish or destroy the sense of volume, the sense of third dimension. When the forms of the sculpture are angular, when the surface is broken by deep interpenetrations and contrasts, light can work to bring out the truly sculptural qualities. As I said, this was a tremendous revelation and it has affected my attitude towards sculpture ever since” (ibid., p. 17).