1936
Bronze
signed Lipchitz and numbered 4/7
30 x 21cm (including base)
Edition 4/7

Jaques Lipchitz (1891-1973) created this rare first maquette for Prometheus and the Vulture in preparation for a large-scale sculpture for the Paris World Fair in 1937. The subject is taken from Greek mythology – the story of the Titan, Prometheus, who stole fire from the Olympian gods and gave it to humanity. Enraged by Prometheus’ actions, Zeus, king of the gods, had him chained to a rock and tormented by a bird of prey that would pluck out his liver, only for it to grow back so the cycle could repeat again in perpetuity. In this sculpture, Prometheus turns on his attacker taking control of his fate – a statement of defiance against the totalitarian fascist regimes that were taking over Europe in the 1930s. Lipchitz’s Prometheus is a symbol of liberty and a martyr to the cause of human autonomy and creativity. The story became a prescient theme for artists in the 20th century, as censorship and authoritarianism threatened the freedom of practitioners in all areas of the arts. The British artist Henry Moore famously produced a series of illustrations for Goete’s poem, Prometheus, in 1950, and Lipchitz himself produced a number of works on the theme, of which this is the first, most energetic and visually raw, demonstrating the cubist style for which he is best known. The plaster sculpture for the 1937 Paris World Fair was destroyed, but a later bronze version, produced in 1944, now resides outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the USA.

Lipchitz was a Lithuanian-born French-American sculptor. Born Chaim Jacob Lipschitz, into a Litvak family, the son of a building contractor in Druskininkai, Lithuania (then within the Russian Empire), he studied at Vilnius grammar school and Vilnius Art School. Under the influence of his father, he studied engineering from 1906, but in 1909, supported by his mother, he moved to Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian. It was there, in the artistic communities of Montmartre and Montparnasse, that he joined a group of artists that included Juan Gris and Pablo Picasso, and his close friend Amedeo Modigliani. Living in this environment, Lipchitz soon began to create Cubist sculpture and, in 1912 he exhibited at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the Salon d’Automne, and had his first solo show at Léonce Rosenberg’s Galerie L’Effort Moderne in Paris in 1920. In 1922, he was commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania to execute seven bas-reliefs and two sculptures.

Lipchitz earlier work is characterised by highly figurative and legible components, but after 1915, naturalist and descriptive elements were muted, dominated by a synthetic style of Cubism. In the 1920s, he experimented with abstract forms which he called ‘transparent sculptures’. Later he developed a more dynamic style, which he applied with telling effect to bronze compositions of figures and animals.

In 1924, Lipchitz became a French citizen through naturalisation and married Berthe Kitrosser. With the German occupation of France during the Second World War, and the deportation of Jews to the Nazi death camps, Lipchitz had to flee France. With the assistance of the American journalist Varian Fry, he escaped the Nazi regime and travelled to the United States, eventually settling in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. Lipchitz was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the Third Sculpture International Exhibition held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1949, and in 1954, a Lipchitz retrospective travelled from The Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and The Cleveland Museum of Art.

In his later years Lipchitz became more involved in his Jewish faith. He began abstaining from work on Shabbat and put on Tefillin daily. Beginning in 1963, he returned to Europe for several months of each year and worked in Pietrasanta, Italy. In 1972, his autobiography, co-authored with H. Harvard Arnason, was published on the occasion of an exhibition of his sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Lipchitz died in Capri, Italy, in 1973. Today his works can be found in major collections around the world, including the Guggenheim Museums, the Tate Gallery, and The Art Institute of Chicago.