About Villanova University Art Collection

Artist: Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973)

At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Lipchitz, a Lithuanian Jew who had emigrated to France, fled Paris with his wife; two years later they arrived in New York, where the sculptor soon rebuilt his career. When the Brazilian government requested a sculpture for a large exterior wall of a new building in Rio de Janeiro, he turned to the Prometheus theme, which he had explored earlier in Paris. Completing a plaster version in 1943, he enlarged it to a 7-foot maquette with the understanding that it would be magnified three times further before casting. The Brazilian government, however, chose to cast the sculpture in its smaller form, and the artist thereupon disowned the work. As if he had not endured enough struggle, Lipchitz saw his New York studio go up in flames in 1952. Virtually all of his work in progress was destroyed. By chance, the plaster of the 1943 Prometheus was in Philadelphia at the time, where it won the George D. Widener Gold Medal in an exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Quickly the Philadelphia Museum of Art purchased the plaster sculpture and arranged for Lipchitz to supervise its casting in bronze. At that time the purchase represented the museum’s largest payment for work by a living sculptor. Now Lipchitz’s Prometheus, with its intense one-eyed stare, continues the eternal battle on the museum steps. Lipchitz also created two other major public works for Philadelphia: The Spirit of Enterprise and Government of the People.

Adapted from Public Art in Philadelphia by Penny Balkin Bach (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1992).
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The above is in reference to two original studies from the collection of Bert Van Bork, both acquired by him directly from the sculptor:

Prometheus Strangling the Vulture; 1936, Paris
mixed media on paper, signed at upper left
23 7/8 x 18 1/8 inches
$7500
[https://mcusercontent.com/7f1613da24f43c79480112f36/images/5a70d57d-c66f-00c6-283e-32cd8a03f1f0.jpg]

Prometheus Strangling the Vulture, 1944 cast 1953
Bronze, Collection Philadelphia Museum of Art
[https://mcusercontent.com/7f1613da24f43c79480112f36/images/6c09f4e0-e7b4-523a-9a37-be514c00de97.jpg]

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Lipchitz created bronze casts of this work in varying sizes after a large, 52 inch high work was originally exhibited in New York at the Buchholz Gallery. The original plaster, Mère et enfant I, is owned by the Tate in London. Earlier in his career Lipchitz participated in the Cubist movement, adapting the spatial ambiguities of pictorial Cubism into three-dimensional language. Mother and Child shows his later interest in humanist themes.

In 1951 Lipchitz described his inspriation for this subject as the birth of his first child in October 1948: "After the Miracle and Sacrifice series, which were very different from almost anything I had ever done before, reflecting a spirit of anger and even pessimism, my mood changed dramatically as a result of the birth of my daughter, Lolya. It was a fantastic experience at the age of fifty-nine finally to have my own child, particularly a daughter, which is what I wanted, partially because I wanted her to have my mother's name. The result in my sculpture was a series of extremely lyrical works on the theme of the mother and child. These have the curvilinear movement in-the-round of the dancers of the earlier 1940s, but the mood is now much more tender and obviously maternal."

The above is in reference to Study for Mother and Child:

1949 mixed media on paper, signed upper right
16 3/4 x 13 5/8 inches
$6500
[https://mcusercontent.com/7f1613da24f43c79480112f36/images/1eee30ae-de56-7ada-7881-22e339655b4c.jpg]

Study for Mother and Child opposite photo of
Lipchitz at work on the sculpture.
Spread from Jacques Lipchitz: The Artist at Work,
by Bert Van Bork, Crown Publishers, NY, 1966

Jacques Lipchitz
Untitled Abstract Nude Carrying Nude, Both Runn...

Lithograph

24 x 17.5 in

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Villanova University Art Collection

Villanova, PA

Artist: Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973)