Jacques Lipchitz (French, American, 1891 to 1973)
Chaim Jacob Jacques Lipchitz was born in Lithuania but moved to Paris in 1909 to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the Academie Julien. He immersed himself in the French artistic community, befriending fellow artists such as Alexander Archipenko, Pablo Picasso, and Amedeo Modigliani. Lipchitz soon established himself as one of the leading proponents of Cubist sculpture. By the early 1930s he had dramatically shifted to a more expressionistic and organic sculptural style, concentrating on mythological and Judaic subject matter. “Samson and the Lion” is a prime example of this unstructured, vibrant approach. Lipchitz fled Paris when the Nazis invaded France in 1940, eventually making his way to New York where he spent the remainder of his life. He exhibited extensively during his lifetime and was well respected by critics and his fellow sculptors. He won the gold medal for sculpture at the 1937 Paris World Exhibition, and was made a Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur in 1946. His works are in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, The Courtauld Gallery in London, The Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Barnes Foundation in P.A., and the Hirshorn Museum in Washington, D.C.
Information courtesy of Neal Auction Company, May, 2008.