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Lot Essay
In medicine, art, philanthropy, and science, Dr. Herbert J. Kayden and his wife, Dr. Gabrielle Reem Kayden, embraced innovative thinking. Remembered by countless patients, students, and artists, they supported scientific research and artistic endeavors with equal curiosity and passion. Their collection of fine art, assembled with scholarship and connoisseurship over many decades, serves as a tangible expression of their commitment to learning and to their personal engagement with the art and ideas of their time.
Drs. Kayden and Reem’s passion for learning and discovery manifested itself in the world class art collection they built beginning in the 1950s. They sought a complement to the innovative thinking they pursued in science by collecting works of signature 20th Century modernists, both European and American, and contemporary artists.
In its richness and quality, their collection embodies two lives spent in the pursuit of knowledge and beauty. In their own words, “There is no question that if you’re taken up with art, the art world, and artists, that it can be enormously gratifying and satisfying; it’s an opportunity to step into a different world and if you are lucky enough to have the door open, you ought to seize it, and take it and enjoy it and revel in it.”
In the words of the collector: “Right before Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Lipchitz began producing drawings and sculptures having to do with the theme of a rescue. Lipchitz explained this as “an instance of wishful thinking, a desire to escape from the nightmare in which I felt I was involved.” Lipchitz began working on The Rescue in 1939, but because of the War, he was unable to finish the piece until after he had settled in America.
The Rescue depicts a man saving a woman. She is supported by the male figure at the level of his hip. A preparatory drawing from 1939 allows a better understanding of their positions. The woman faces the man. Her hair and her arms fall back towards the ground, and her legs kick up behind the man’s back. In the sculpture, the woman’s eyes and the man’s left eye are marked by round depressions in the otherwise smooth surface of their faces. Lipchitz joined the woman’s arms and the man’s legs into two U-shaped supports and the figures also meld together at the hips. This sort of union between a pair of figures, whether they are involved in an embrace or a conflict, is not uncommon in Lipchitz’s sculpture.
But at the same time, it is too rigid to read the sculpture only in this manner. The artist clearly intended some ambiguity in the representation (as he did in its preparatory drawing as well). Surprising, for example, is the woman’s right breast, marked with a depression which might signify a nipple, yet at the same time suggests another head with another eye. Such abstraction emphasises the formal elements in the sculpture, the curves and counter curves and flowing uninterrupted surfaces.”
Drs. Kayden and Reem’s passion for learning and discovery manifested itself in the world class art collection they built beginning in the 1950s. They sought a complement to the innovative thinking they pursued in science by collecting works of signature 20th Century modernists, both European and American, and contemporary artists.
In its richness and quality, their collection embodies two lives spent in the pursuit of knowledge and beauty. In their own words, “There is no question that if you’re taken up with art, the art world, and artists, that it can be enormously gratifying and satisfying; it’s an opportunity to step into a different world and if you are lucky enough to have the door open, you ought to seize it, and take it and enjoy it and revel in it.”
In the words of the collector: “Right before Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Lipchitz began producing drawings and sculptures having to do with the theme of a rescue. Lipchitz explained this as “an instance of wishful thinking, a desire to escape from the nightmare in which I felt I was involved.” Lipchitz began working on The Rescue in 1939, but because of the War, he was unable to finish the piece until after he had settled in America.
The Rescue depicts a man saving a woman. She is supported by the male figure at the level of his hip. A preparatory drawing from 1939 allows a better understanding of their positions. The woman faces the man. Her hair and her arms fall back towards the ground, and her legs kick up behind the man’s back. In the sculpture, the woman’s eyes and the man’s left eye are marked by round depressions in the otherwise smooth surface of their faces. Lipchitz joined the woman’s arms and the man’s legs into two U-shaped supports and the figures also meld together at the hips. This sort of union between a pair of figures, whether they are involved in an embrace or a conflict, is not uncommon in Lipchitz’s sculpture.
But at the same time, it is too rigid to read the sculpture only in this manner. The artist clearly intended some ambiguity in the representation (as he did in its preparatory drawing as well). Surprising, for example, is the woman’s right breast, marked with a depression which might signify a nipple, yet at the same time suggests another head with another eye. Such abstraction emphasises the formal elements in the sculpture, the curves and counter curves and flowing uninterrupted surfaces.”