Object Type Medium Support Style Artist Creation Date Choose one Architecture Assemblage Cartoon drawing Collage Construction Drawing Drawing and limited edition print Drawing, textile Exhibition Site Installation Montage Painting Painting (relief) Photograph Photograph and audio Photograph and drawing Photograph, collage Portfolio for photographs Print Print Print (altered) Print on canvas Print with drawing Print with hand-coloring Print with hand-painting Print with objects Print, collage Print, drawing Print, photograph Prints Sculpture Sculpture (multiple) Textile Video Wall relief

Jacques Lipchitz

• Medium:Sculpture
• Nationality:

  French

• Life Dates:

  (Lithuania, 1891 - 1973, Capri, Italy)

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Jacques Lipchitz was born in Lithuania as Chaim Jacob Lipchitz. After schooling in engineering in Vilna, he moved to Paris in 1909 to study sculpture. Between 1909 and 1912, he attended classes in sculpture, anatomy, and drawing at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Académie Julian, and the Académie Colarossi. He was recalled to Russia for military service in 1912 but discharged on medical grounds; he returned to Paris and took a studio next door to the Rumanian-born sculptor Constantin Brancusi. From the stylized figurative sculpture of his early years in Paris, Lipchitz's work gradually developed as he absorbed ideas from the Cubist painting of the time. He had extensive contacts with other artists and writers and formed friendships with the poet Max Jacob and with painters Diego Rivera, Amadeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, Pablo Picasso, and Juan Gris, the latter two being especially significant for his art. By 1915 he had evolved a fully Cubist sculptural idiom. In this early phase of his work he sought to discover the essential forms and unchanging structures of objects and the human figure. Lipchitz worked in France until the German invasion in 1940, when he immigrated to New York. From this point on, his sculpture became more narrative and autobiographical, emphasizing biblical or personal themes. Lipchitz is especially remembered at MIT for his support of the Institute’s program in the arts. In 1965, students enrolled in Professor Anderson’s Modern Art seminar were invited to tour his studio in New York. After 1963, Lipchitz returned to Europe, working primarily in Italy. Lipchitz exhibited regularly in exhibitions in Paris beginning in 1912 and received the first of numerous solo exhibitions in 1920. His works have been displayed in a large number of solo exhibitions at the Petit Palais, Paris; Portland Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; the 1952 Venice Biennale; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Detroit Institute of Arts; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Jacques Lipchitz died in Capri, Italy, in 1973 and was buried in Jerusalem.

Photo by F.K. Lloyd, Courtesy Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY.