Jacques Lipchitz, "Reclining Figure"

About Jacques Lipchitz (1891 - 1973)

Born in 1891 in Druskinikai, Lithuania, Chaim Jacob Lipchitz’s interest in art started at an early age, a vocation that was frowned upon by his father. With the support of his mother, however, Lipchitz moved to Paris in 1909 to study art at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian, and by 1912, had exhibited his work at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the Salon d'Automne, eventually changing his name to Jacques. It was during these early, formative years that Lipchitz surrounded himself with artist friends Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso and Amadeo Modigliani in the famed Montmarte area of Paris, and where he worked primarily in the cubist idiom, an artistic style for which he best known and considered among one of the foremost practitioners to develop this style in sculpture.

 

Lipchitz’s first one-man exhibition was held at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie L'Effort Moderne in 1920 and it was at Rosenberg’s gallery where Lipchitz’s work caught the interest of Dr. Albert C. Barnes, who not only purchased works by the artist, but also commissioned him to create several bas-reliefs to adorn Barnes’ new building that would later become home to the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania.

 

By 1924, Lipchitz became a naturalized French citizen and married Berthe Kitrosser.  With the patronage of Barnes, the Lipchitzs were able to commission a new home and studio designed by Le Corbusier in the Boulogne-Billancourt suburb of Paris.

 

With the rise of the Nazi regime and the occupation of France during World War II, the Lipchitzs were able to escape France with the help of the American journalist, Varian Fry, and the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC). They landed in New York where they would continue to live for a short time. After the war, Berthe Lipchitz returned to France, and eventually the couple split. Lipchitz later married Yulla Halberstadt, and they continued to live in New York City for a few years where they welcomed their daughter, Loyla, in 1948.  Eventually the family would settle in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.

 

Lipchitz continued to live and work in New York, eventually spending several months a year working in Pietrasanta, Italy.  He continued exhibiting his work and in 1954, the Museum of Modern Art organized a traveling retrospective of his work.

 

Lipchitz died in Capri, Italy in 1973 and is buried in Jerusalem.