- Artist
- Jacques Lipchitz 1891–1973
- Original title
- Le Toréador
- Medium
- Plaster
- Dimensions
- Object: 845 × 267 × 254 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by the Lipchitz Foundation 1982
- Reference
- T03487
Catalogue entry
T03487 Toreador 1914–15
Plaster, painted 33 1/4 × 10 1/2 × 10 (845 × 267 × 254)
Not inscribed
Presented by the Lipchitz Foundation 1982
Lit: Irene Patai, Encounters, The Life of Jacques Lipchitz, 1961, pp.143–4, 152–3 and 156; Bert van Bork, Jacques Lipchitz, The Artist at Work, 1966, repr. p.90 (as ‘bronze’); Lipchitz 1972, pp.18–19, 23 and repr.13 (bronze); Stott 1975, p.256 (14, bronze)
Lipchitz left Paris for a long visit to Spain and Majorca in 1914, with Diego Rivera and both their families. In Madrid he became enthusiastic about bullfighting, and became a friend, according to Patai, of the toreador Joselito, who posed for this sculpture. Lipchitz and Rivera, although neither of them French citizens and so not liable for military service, were unable to return to France at the outbreak of war in August and remained in Spain until the New Year. Lipchitz finished the sculpture in Paris in early 1915.
An undated drawing by Lipchitz of this figure shows the head facing the front, and was probably made during the modelling of the sculpture (Jacques Lipchitz, Small Sculptures, Maquettes and Drawings 1915–1972, Marlborough Gallery Inc., New York, March 1979, repr.p.5).
A bronze cast of the ‘Toreador’ was shown in Lipchitz's retrospective exhibition at the Galerie de la Renaissance in Paris in 1930. Patai records that three of the Spanish sculptures were cast in bronze by Valsuani in Paris in about 1915, and so T03487 was probably the model for one of these casts. This plaster is presumably an original of 1915. Its surface was cleaned and painted with shellac and pigment in the 1970s.
[For T03397 and T03479 to T03534 the foundry inscriptions, and reproductions of casts in other materials in the books listed below, are recorded. Abbreviations used:
Arnason 1969 H.H. Arnason, Jacques Lipchitz: Sketches in Bronze, 1969
Lipchitz 1972 Jacques Lipchitz, My Life in Sculpture, 1972
Stott 1975 Deborah A. Stott, Jacques Lipchitz and Cubism, 1975 (reprinted 1978)
Otterlo 1977 A.M. Hammacher, Lipchitz in Otterlo, Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, 1977
Centre Pompidou 1978 Nicole Barbier, Lipchitz: oeuvres de Jacques Lipchitz (1891–1973) dans les collections du Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1978
Arizona 1982 Jacques Lipchitz. Sketches and Models in the collection of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona. Introduction and catalogue by Peter Bermingham, 1982]
Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1982-84: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1986
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