Jacques Lipchitz

Don Jorge C. Fanelli (acquired directly from the artist)
Ricardo Fanelli (by descent from the above)
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2005

Alan G. Wilkinson, Jacques Lipchitz, A Life in Sculpture (exhibition catalogue), Toronto, Art Gallery of Toronto, 1990, no. 38, illustration of the basalt version p. 96
Alan G. Wilkinson, The Sculpture of Jacques Lipchitz, A Catalogue raisonné, The Paris Year 1919-1940, vol. I, London, 1996, no. 140-142, illustration of the bronze, basalt and artificial stone versions pp. 62-63
Paris Capital of the Arts 1910-1950 (exhibition catalogue), Whitford Fine Art, London, 2006, no. 13, illustrated n.p.

Bardiglio marble. Apart from some dirt in the crevices and some light surface scratches and minor wear to some of the extremities, consistent with age and handling, this work is in overall very good condition. Colours: overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue, though slightly lighter in the original.
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 From the moment he witnessed a young sailor serenading a pretty girl on his guitar in Majorca the summer after the outbreak of the First World War, Lipchitz was inspired to sculpt the motif of a guitar player and it would engross him for the rest of his career. The guitar player was a fixed motif onto which he could lay his work: ‘At the first stage of artistic creation there are only pure plastic intentions…Then comes the discovery of the motif that can permit one to realise these intentions. The motif furnishes the principle elements, simple relations of position between masses.’ (quoted in Alan G. Wilkinson, Jacques Lipchitz: A Life in Sculpture, Toronto, 1989, p. 14) The artist favoured this model for its ‘total integration of the man, the guitar, and the chair. All become part of one another. The guitar is also the torso of the man and the man’s legs are those of the chair’, and the reductive method of carving in marble applied in the present version most aptly fulfills this concept (ibid, p. 96).

 Lipchitz’s intuitive understanding of the sculptural possibilities of Cubism is evident in this piece by the reduced and sharply angled yet weighty forms. Although involved from the beginning with this innovative style, forming tight friendships with Picasso and Gris in the early 1910s and having his works sold through Cubist supporter Léonce Rosenberg, this work is testament to his dedication to the aesthetic. This motif held particular resonance for the artist, as he explained himself: ‘Looking at the Seated Man with Guitar again, after many years…I realize that it is significant not only in its clear use of curving planes to create effects of interior or negative space, but also, when compared with other figures of the period, it demonstrates a new or revived interest in frontality…Seated Man with Guitar was a sculpture which I was happy with.  I felt it to be new and successful, without completely understanding why.’ (Jacques Lipchitz & H.Harvard Arnason, My Life in Sculpture, New York, 1972, pp. 50-1).