- Artist
- Jacques Lipchitz 1891–1973
- Original title
- Joueur de guitare assis
- Medium
- Plaster
- Dimensions
- Object: 394 × 292 × 304 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by the Lipchitz Foundation 1982
- Reference
- T03529
Catalogue entry
T03529 Guitar Player in Armchair 1922
Plaster, coated with shellac 15 1/2 × 11 1/2 × 12 (394 × 292 × 304)
Inscribed ‘1922 J Lipchitz’ moulded into plaster at back of chair, and painted under base ‘W.’ in red, and over that ‘3 off/GUITAR PLAYER/IN ARMCHAIR/1922/251’ IN BLACK Presented by the Lipchitz Foundation 1982
Lit: Lipchitz 1972, p.70
The stone carving of this sculpture, in granite, belongs to a private collector in New York (A.M. Hammacher, Jacques Lipchitz, 1975, repr. 86). The years 1921–2 were difficult for Lipchitz financially - apart from the commissions from Coco Chanel - and it is unlikely that he could then have afforded then to have this carving made, and it is probably of a later date. At his retrospective exhibition of 1930 Lipchitz included a cast of this sculpture in artificial stone (Jacques Lipchitz à la Renaissance, June 1930 (49). It is reproduced in Documents, 1, 1930, p.20).
A small plaster at the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, ‘Seated Man with Guitar’ (1921) is a study for this sculpture. This study was not cast in bronze with other sketches reproduced by Arnason. The origin of this composition in such a small clay model accounts for the flowing lines, in contrast to the preceding cubist work. The study also resembles the firedogs made for Coco Chanel in its curved legs, the internal corner and the way in which the figure merges with the guitar. This double use of shapes, as also with the figure's legs and those of the chair, is pointed out by Lipchitz in his autobiography with reference to this sculpture (op.cit., p.70).
The plaster is presumably an original cast of 1922.
[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
Explore
- abstraction(8,615)
-
- from recognisable sources(3,634)
-
- figure(2,270)
- music and entertainment(2,331)
-
- music(916)
- fine arts and music(3,982)
- chair(915)