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Dimensions: height: 30 3/4 in.
78 cm
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Provenance: THE PHILIP AND MURIEL BERMAN COLLECTION
Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Inc., New York
Mrs. Algur H. Meadows (sold: Christie's, New York, November 3, 1982, lot 12)
Acquired at the above sale
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Exhibited: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Jacques Lipchitz and Philadelphia, 2004, no. 7
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Literature: H.R. Hope, The Sculpture of Jacques Lipchitz, New York, 1954, illustration of the stone version p. 34
Jacques Lipchitz and H. H. Arnason, My Life in Sculpture, New York, 1972, fig. 37, illustration of another cast p. 48
Douglas Cooper, The Cubist Epoch, Dubai, 1994, no. 195, illustration of another cast pl. 312
Alan G. Wilkinson, The Sculpture of Jacques Lipchitz, A Catalogue Raisonné, Volume One, The Paris Years, 1910-1940, New York, 1996, no. 69, illustration of another cast p. 48
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Notes: Images of mandolin or guitar players figured largely in Lipchitz's production during and after the First World War. The subject was not uncommon among the Cubists, but Lipchitz was one of the few artists to render this figure as a man. The gender choice is important to note, as the abstraction of the male body was a rare subject for artists of this era. Lipchitz, however, fully explored the aesthetic potential of the masculine form, using broad, angular forms and sharp angles to render the powerful body.
Lipchitz conceived this work while he was living in Paris in 1918 and carved the first version of it in stone. Like many of his other works from the 1910s and 1920s, Lipchitz returned to this figure after he emigrated to America and cast it in bronze in an edition of seven between 1957 and 1962. The present work is number five from that edition, which was cast under the artist's supervision at the Modern Art Foundry in Long Island City. In his memoirs, Lipchitz wrote the following about this sculpture: "Looking at the Seated Man with Guitar again, after many years...I realize that it is significant not only in its clear use of curving planes to create effects of interior or negative space, but also, when compared with other figures of the period, it demonstrates a new or revived interest in frontality...Seated Man with Guitar was a sculpture which I was happy with. I felt it to be new and successful, without completely understanding why," (Jacques Lipchitz, op. cit., pp. 50 an 51).
According to the catalogue raisonné, other casts of this sculpture are in the collections of the Saarland Museum, Moderne Galerie, Saarbrücken; the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
