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PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION

1887-1964
SEATED GEOMETRIC FIGURE

height: 45.5cm., 17 7/8 in.

Conceived in 1913 and cast in bronze in an edition of 6.

inscribed Archipenko, with the date 1913 and numbered 4/6

bronze

PROVENANCE

Acquired from the artist by the present owner in 1963

EXHIBITED

Milan, Centro Culturale San Fedele
Milan, Galleria del Levante

LITERATURE

Alexander Archipenko, Archipenko: Fifty Creative Years 1908-1958, New York, 1960, no. 9, illustration in colour of another example
Carlo Belloli, 'Il contributo russo alle avanguardie plastische' in Domus, Milan, February 1965, illustration of another example p. 31
Donald H. Karshan (ed.), Archipenko, International Visionary, Washington, 1969, no. 54, illustration of another example p. 50
Annette Barth, Alexander Archipenkos plastisches ~uvre, Frankfurt am Main, 1997, vol.II, no. 50, illustration of another example p. 111

NOTE

In the introduction to Archipenko's first one-man exhibition in 1912, Guillaume Apollinaire comments that 'Archipenko builds realities. His art approaches absolute sculpture closer and closer' (G. Apollinaire, Introduction to Archipenko's first one-man exhibition, Folkwang Museum, Hagen, Germany, 1912).

In the present work, we see that Archipenko is distilling the human figure into weighty geometric forms that resonate with cubist ideals, the artistic style that can most loosely be associated with the artist's work (in the first cubist exhibition of 1910, Archipenko was included as a 'cubist' sculptor).

Archipenko was at his most productive when living in France from 1908-20, the period this work dates from. Seated Geometric Figure is a quintessential sculpture from this hugely innovative period in the artist's life. The forms in the present work are simpler, more generalised and monumental in concept. Archipenko conceived the present composition at the height of the cubist frenzy in Paris, and it is clear that many of the cubist ideals of the main protagonists greatly influenced this particular work. As Michaelsen comments, 'in their search for alternatives to impressionism, painters and sculptors alike employed these 'primitive' sources to arrive at the new vocabulary of clear massive forms that became the point of departure for cubism' (K. Janszkyn Michaelsen & Nehama Guralnik (eds.) Alexander Archipenko, A Centennial Tribute, National Gallery of Washington, 1986, p. 20).