- Artist
- Jacques Lipchitz 1891–1973
- Original title
- Femme couchée et guitare
- Medium
- Bronze
- Dimensions
- Object: 413 × 746 × 330 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased 1959
- Reference
- T00311
Catalogue entry
Jacques Lipchitz 1891-1973
T00311 Femme couchée et Guitare
(Reclining Woman with Guitar) 1928
Inscribed with thumb print and '3/7 J Lipchitz' on top of base at back; also 'MODERN ART FDRY. N.Y.' on side of base at back
Bronze, 16 1/4 x 29 3/8 x 13 (41.5 x 74.5 x 33)
Purchased from the artist through Fine Arts Associates, New York (Grant-in-Aid) 1959
Exh:
Jacques Lipchitz, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, March-May 1958 (55); Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, May-July 1958 (55); Kunsthalle, Basle, August-September 1958 (50); Städtische Galerie, Munich, September-October 1958 (50); Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, November-December 1958 (50); Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, May-June 1959 (50); Tate Gallery, November-December 1959 (49)
Lit:
Jacques Lipchitz with H.H. Arnason, My Life in Sculpture
(New York 1972), p.103, black basalt version repr. fig.83
Repr:
John Rothenstein, The Tate Gallery
(London 1966), p.262
The artist told H.H. Arnason that he first made this sculpture in black basalt. As it was not large enough for Mme H. de Mandrot, who wanted it for the garden of her summer-house by Le Corbusier at Le Pradet, he made it again for her in white stone, with the pedestal in a rough stone. The basalt version was later purchased by Mrs John D. Rockefeller III and is now on extended loan to the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The carving in white stone, which measures 55 x 100 x 45cm (48.5 x 88 x 38cm without the base), was presented by Mme de Mandrot in 1948 to the Kunsthaus, Zurich.
'The subject', he said, 'is a reclining figure with a guitar; the curved shape of the right leg is also the shape of the guitar. This is again a total assimilation of the figure to the guitar-object; even the left arm reiterates the shape of the guitar. The work is massively conceived in curvilinear volumes, with a strong sense of frontality, but involving a movement in and out of depth. Thus, the lower, or right, leg is composed at a diagonal directing the eye through the space below the left leg. Similar planar diagonals under the head and the left arm emphasise the opening void' (Lipchitz and Arnason, loc. cit.).
This bronze cast, the third of an edition of seven, was made in the Modern Art Foundry in Long Island City, New York. A study for this work in terracotta is reproduced in Maurice Raynal, Jacques Lipchitz
(Paris 1947), n.p.; it has also been cast in bronze.
Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, pp.449-50, reproduced p.449