Jacques Lipchitz

Born in Druskieneki 1891 – Died in Capri 1973

Sculptor of Lithuanian origin, naturalized French and then American. He moved to Paris in 1909, after training as an engineer to study both at the Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian. He encountered the artistic avant-garde of the time: Henri Matisse, Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, and Amedeo Modigliani.
It was from this artistic effervescence that Lipchitz drew his early influences. Cubism fascinated him, and he transposed its principles into abstract sculptures from 1915, exhibiting them for the first time in 1920 at the Galerie l'Effort Moderne in Paris. In 1925, he created the "Transparents" series, sculptures with more naturalistic compositions in which he played with bronze and empty spaces. In 1941, he fled the war and settled in the United States. The sharp edges disappeared from his sculptures, giving way to curves and smooth surfaces. Gradually, he turned to mythological or biblical themes, reinventing episodes already explored in the past, but this time in works full of movement. In the 1960s, his works were imbued with a frenetic Baroque style, which he blended with cubist reminiscences.
In the early 1970s, he created three brooches as part of a fundraising campaign for the State of Israel.