Personal and professional papers of Jacques Lipchitz
1910–73
Jacques Lipchitz (22 August 1891-26 May 1973) was a French-American sculptor of the Cubist style. He was born to a Jewish family in Druskieniki, present day Lithuania, then a part of the Russian Empire. In 1909 he moved to Paris to study sculpture and, with some short gaps, stayed there until his emmigration to the USA in 1942. Lipchitz retained highly figurative and legible components in his work leading up to 1915-16, after which naturalist and descriptive elements were muted, and dominated by a synthetic style of Crystal Cubism. In 1920 Lipchitz held his first solo exhibition, at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie L'Effort Moderne in Paris. Fleeing the Nazis he moved to the USA in 1942 and settled in New York City and eventually to Hastings-on-Hudson.
These digitised materials include 280 pages of his three notebooks showing the artist in his early days in Paris (1915-25), during the hardships of the war and before his ability as a sculptor was widely recognised. There are also around 1000 items from Lipchitz's personal and business correspondence, reflecting his connections with European artists (Moishe Kisling, Le Corbusier, Karl Teige), and his personal life, evident in his letters to his wife Berthe, parents, siblings, and close friends. There are 150 documents related to two of Lipchitz's artistic and political projects before the Second World War, namely his participation in the Paris International Exhibition of 1937 and his trip to the USSR in 1935. Also included are 50 of his drawings and several examples of rare printed materials, such as early Cubist and Futurist journals and the publications of emigre Russsian communities in Paris. Finally there are more than 1000 photographs, mostly of maquettes of his statues, but also of his family and friends.
- Collection Owner
- Jacques Lipchitz 1891–1973
- Collection
- Tate Archive
- Acquisition
- Presented to Tate Archive by Rubin Lipchitz, March 1989; the cataloguing and selective digitisation of this archive collection was supported by Mr Timm Bergold, 2023
- Reference
- TGA 897
451 objects in this collection
- Title
- Unrealised exhibitions in Moscow (1937-39)
- Date
- 1935–7
- Description
- During his trip to the USSR in 1935 Jacques Lipchitz was commissioned to make a portrait of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the political police for the exhibition 'Industriya sotsializma' (Industry of socialism) in Moscow 1937. In 1937 Lipchitz was also commissioned to create a portrait of Sergo Ordzhonikidze, influential Soviet politician and the Minister of Industry (among other positions), who died in suspicious circumstances. This second commission was cancelled soon after its inception. The exhibition 'Industry of socialism' took place in 1939, and Lipchitz's 'Portrait of Dzerzhinsky' was not displayed, probably for political reasons. During his stay in Moscow he also submitted his project for the Soviet Pavillion at the Internationale Exhibition Paris 1937, but at some point the plan was rejected. All three projects could be related to his attempts to help his brother, Pavel (Pinya) Lipchitz, who was arrested and killed by the NKVD soon after Jacques Lipchitz's visit to the USSR, and his step-son, Andre Shimkevich, who was arrested first for the time in 1931 and spent time in prisons and labour camps for more than 30 years.
- Reference
- TGA 897/3/1/3