Jacques LIPCHITZ (1891-1973) - Harlequin with accordion

"Harlequin à l'Accordéon" (Harlequin with an Accordion)

Very rare proof in black patina bronze
Cast by Fonderie C. Valsuani
Signed on the back of the terrace
Bears the foundry's rectangular stamp: "Cire - C. Valsuani - perdue".
1926

Height: 24.5 cm

Bibliography: This work is part of the "Transparents" series created by Lipchitz from 1925 to 1930.
A similar work is reproduced in the catalog raisonné of Jacques Lipchitz, by Alan G. Wilkinson, Editions Thames & Hudson, Volume II, page 20 under number 190b.

Biography :
Chaim Jacob Lipchitz, known as Jacques Lipchitz, was born on August 22, 1891 in Druskininkai, Lithuania, and died in Capri in 1973.

He became a naturalized French citizen, then an American.

In 1909, he arrived in Paris and studied at the École des Beaux Arts and the Académie Julian until 1913.
At La Ruche, in the Montparnasse district, he rubbed shoulders with the artists of the future Paris School and befriended many of them (A. Modigliani, Picasso, Juan Gris, Braque, Le Corbusier).

In 1912, he exhibited at the Salon Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the Salon d'Automne.
After a "procubist" period from 1913 to 1915, Jacques Lipchitz, guided by his desire to "create art as pure as crystal", moved towards cubism and then abstraction until 1930, but "without losing the sense of the subject and its humanity".

He contributed to the magazine L'Esprit Nouveau.

First solo exhibition in 1920 at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie de l'Effort Moderne.

He became a French citizen in 1924.
In 1925, he moved to Boulogne Billancourt with his friend Juan Gris, and worked in his studio-home designed by Le Corbusier.

It was around 1925 that he invented the "Transparents", lightweight clerestory structures made of wood and cardboard, cut to size and then cast in bronze using the lost-wax process.

By the 1930s, he was modeling highly expressive figurines in clay, depicting mythological and biblical scenes.

In 1941, thanks to Varian Fry, he and his first wife, the poet Berthe Kitrosser, fled France for the United States, where he became a citizen in 1958. He divorced in 1948 and married Yulla Halberstadt, also a sculptor.
This marked the start of a prolific "second career". He exhibited regularly at the Buchholz Gallery in New York.

Jacques Lipchitz died in Capri in May 1973 and is buried in Jerusalem.