Lot Essay
Conceived in 1912, Chana Orloff's Torse is an elegant example of the artist's early Parisian work. Chana Orloff was born in the Ukraine, her family immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1905. Orloff travelled to Paris in 1910 to apprentice and obtain a diploma with the couturier Paquin. She discovered her love for art and began studying at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs and later at the 'Russian Academy' in Montparnasse. Orloff quickly became part of this burgeoning Jewish artistic community. Her modernist home, designed by the architect Auguste Perret became a meeting place for the artists of this group as well as for visiting artists from Israel.
'In her works of the period, Chana Orloff resolved an issue which was prominent for sculptors of this period. The influence of Cubism was strong, the sculptors were searching for a mode of expression which was sculptural but not pictorial, evoking reality yet not descriptive. Chana Orloff resolved this paradox by renouncing figurative realism from 1912 and onwards. This was achieved by imposing an analytic method comprised of a massive simplification of volumes, followed by a progressive articulation of these volumes to a point where they regained a subtle feeling of motion, by means of positioning numerous successive non-geometric surfaces alongside each other. This type of conception is particularly evident in Torse of 1912'. (F. Marcilhac, op. cit., p. 32)
'In her works of the period, Chana Orloff resolved an issue which was prominent for sculptors of this period. The influence of Cubism was strong, the sculptors were searching for a mode of expression which was sculptural but not pictorial, evoking reality yet not descriptive. Chana Orloff resolved this paradox by renouncing figurative realism from 1912 and onwards. This was achieved by imposing an analytic method comprised of a massive simplification of volumes, followed by a progressive articulation of these volumes to a point where they regained a subtle feeling of motion, by means of positioning numerous successive non-geometric surfaces alongside each other. This type of conception is particularly evident in Torse of 1912'. (F. Marcilhac, op. cit., p. 32)