Jacques Lipchitz (1891 - 1973) was a Cubist sculptor. Lipchitz retained highly figurative and legible components in his work leading up to 1915–16, after which naturalist and descriptive elements were muted, dominated by a synthetic style of Crystal Cubism. In 1920 Lipchitz held his first solo exhibition in Paris. Fleeing the Nazis he moved to the US and settled in New York City and eventually Hastings-on-Hudson.
Jacques Lipchitz was born Chaim Jacob Lipschitz, in a Litvak family, son of a building contractor in Druskininkai, Lithuania, then within the Russian Empire. At first, under the influence of his father, he studied engineering, but soon after, supported by his mother he moved to Paris (1909) to study at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian.
It was there, in the artistic communities of Montmartre and Montparnasse, that he joined a group of artists that included Juan Gris and Pablo Picasso as well as where his friend, Amedeo Modigliani, painted Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz.
Living in this environment, Lipchitz soon began to create Cubist sculpture. In 1922 he was commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania to execute seven bas-reliefs and two sculptures.
In 1924-25 Lipchitz became a French citizen through naturalization and married Berthe Kirosser. With the German occupation of France during World War II, and the deportation of Jews to the Nazi death camps, Lipchitz had to flee France. With the assistance of the American journalist Varian Fry in Marseille, he escaped the Nazi regime and went to the United States. There, he eventually settled in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.
He was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the Third Sculpture International Exhibition held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. He has been identified among seventy of those sculptors in a photograph Life magazine published that was taken at the exhibition. In 1954 a Lipchitz retrospective traveled from The Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and The Cleveland Museum of Art. In 1959, his series of small bronzes To the Limit of the Possible was shown at Fine Arts Associates in New York.
In his later years Lipchitz became more involved in his Jewish faith, even referring to himself as a "religious Jew" in an interview in 1970. He began abstaining from work on Shabbat and put on Tefillin daily.
Beginning in 1963 he returned to Europe for several months of each year and worked in Pietrasanta, Italy. In 1972 his autobiography, co-authored with H. Harvard Arnason, was published on the occasion of an exhibition of his sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
© 2019. All images are copyrighted © by Jacques Lipchitz or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only.
Jacques Lipchitz was born Chaim Jacob Lipschitz, in a Litvak family, son of a building contractor in Druskininkai, Lithuania, then within the Russian Empire. At first, under the influence of his father, he studied engineering, but soon after, supported by his mother he moved to Paris (1909) to study at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian.
It was there, in the artistic communities of Montmartre and Montparnasse, that he joined a group of artists that included Juan Gris and Pablo Picasso as well as where his friend, Amedeo Modigliani, painted Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz.
Living in this environment, Lipchitz soon began to create Cubist sculpture. In 1922 he was commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania to execute seven bas-reliefs and two sculptures.
In 1924-25 Lipchitz became a French citizen through naturalization and married Berthe Kirosser. With the German occupation of France during World War II, and the deportation of Jews to the Nazi death camps, Lipchitz had to flee France. With the assistance of the American journalist Varian Fry in Marseille, he escaped the Nazi regime and went to the United States. There, he eventually settled in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.
He was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the Third Sculpture International Exhibition held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. He has been identified among seventy of those sculptors in a photograph Life magazine published that was taken at the exhibition. In 1954 a Lipchitz retrospective traveled from The Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and The Cleveland Museum of Art. In 1959, his series of small bronzes To the Limit of the Possible was shown at Fine Arts Associates in New York.
In his later years Lipchitz became more involved in his Jewish faith, even referring to himself as a "religious Jew" in an interview in 1970. He began abstaining from work on Shabbat and put on Tefillin daily.
Beginning in 1963 he returned to Europe for several months of each year and worked in Pietrasanta, Italy. In 1972 his autobiography, co-authored with H. Harvard Arnason, was published on the occasion of an exhibition of his sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
© 2019. All images are copyrighted © by Jacques Lipchitz or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only.
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| Mr Jacques Lipchitz |
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| 1969, Peace on Earth |
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| 1967-68, Sketch for "Government of the People" |
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| 1964, Sketch for ‘Bellerophon Taming Pegasus’ |
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| 1962, Sketch for ‘Our Tree of Life’ |
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| 1953, Study for Monument to ‘The Spirit of Enterprise’ |
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| 1953, Sketch for Enterprise |
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| 1949, Mother and Child |
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| 1976, Government of the People |
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| 1949, Mother and Child II |
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| 1948, Variation on the Theme of Hagar |
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| 1948, Study for Hagar |
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| 1946, Song of Songs |
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| 1945-46. The Joy of Orpheus II |
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| 1945, Song of Songs |
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| 1944-50, Birth of the Muses, bronze |
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| 1944, Prometheus Stangling the Vulture |
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| 1942,Theseus and the Minotaur |
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| 1941-42, Blossoming |
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| 1941, The Arrival |
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| 1938, The Rape of Europa |
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| 1936, Study for ‘Prometheus’ |
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| 1936, Study for Prometheus, (cast 1960s) |
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| 1936, Prometheus and the Vulture |
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| 1934, First Study for ‘Toward a New World’, (cast 1965) |
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| 1934, First Study for Pastoral |
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| 1933, David and Goliath, on a Column |
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| 1932, Picador, Bas Relief |
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| 1932, Bull and Condor |
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| 1931, Song of the Vowels |
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| 1931, Return of the Prodigal Son |
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| 1931, Jacob and the Angel, (cast 1960s) |
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| 1930, The Snuffer, (cast 1960s) |
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| 1930, The Harpist |
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| 1928, Reclining Woman with a Guitar |
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| 1926, Mardi Gras |
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| 1925, Seated Man |
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| 1924, Musical Instruments, Standing Relief |
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| 1923, Musical Instruments |
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| 1922, Guitar Player in Armchair |
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| 1921, Reclining Woman |
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| 1919, Homme Assis à la Clarinette II |
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| 1918, Man playing guitar |
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| 1917, Seated Figure |
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| 1917, Bather |
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| 1916, Seated Bather |
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| 1915, Figure, (cast 1964) |
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| 1912, Pregnant Woman |
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| 1911-12, Head of a Woman |
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