Jacques Lipchitz

Sculptor. Born as Chaïm-Jacob Lipchitz in Druskeniki in Grodno (Hrodna) Province (1891). Attended commercial college in Belostok (1902–06) and grammar school in Vilna (from 1906). Studied sculpture at Vilna School of Drawing. Emigrated to Paris and enrolled at the École nationale des beaux-arts (1909). Attended the Académie Rodolphe Julian and Académie de Filippo Colarossi. Rented a studio in Montparnasse (1912). Friend of Amedeo Modigliani and Chaïm Soutine. Influenced by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Umberto Boccioni. Created Cubist sculptures, experimented with coloured reliefs (from 1915). Sculpted busts of Coco Chanel, Jean Cocteau and Gertrude Stein (1920s). Awarded French citizenship (1924). Lived in a house and studio designed by Le Corbusier in Boulogne-sur-Seine. Created “transparent sculptures” with holes and niches (1925). Donated a version of Joie de Vivre to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. Designed a series of works on mythological and biblical themes, including Prometheus for the Palace of Discoveries and Inventions at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris (1937). Moved to the United States (1941). Honorary doctor of Brandeis University, Columbia University and Tel Aviv University. Awarded the Légion d’honneur (1946) and gold medals by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia (1952) and the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1968). Published memoirs entitled My Life in Sculpture (1972). Died on Capri (19730. Contributed to exhibitions (from 1913). Contributed to the Salon d’Automne (1913), Salon de la Nationale (1913), group exhibition with Diego Rivera and Maria Guttierrez-Cueto y Blanchard in Madrid (1914), Exhibitions of Russian Art in London (1921), Paris (1931) and Wilmington (1932), Contemporary French Art in Moscow (1928), Masters of Independent Art in Paris (1937) and one-man shows at the Galerie l’Effort Moderne (1920), Galerie la Renaissance in Paris (1930), Brummer Gallery in New York (1935) and the Metropolitan Museum in New York (1972).