Cubist sculpture

Cubist sculpture
Otto Gutfreund, Cellist, 1912–13
Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Two views of 'The Large Horse, bronze, 1914, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Cubist sculpture is a style developed in parallel with cubist painting, centered in Paris, beginning around 1909 and evolving through the early 1920s.

The style is most closely associated with the formal experiments of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Some sources name Picasso's 1909 bronze Head of a Woman as the first cubist sculpture, [1] although art historian Douglas Cooper credits the Czech sculptor Otto Gutfreund (1889–1927).

In either case, others were very quick to follow Braque and Picasso's lead in Paris, artists like Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918), whose career was cut short by his death in military service, and Alexander Archipenko, who'd arrived in Paris in 1908 and whose 1912 Walking Woman is cited as the first modern sculpture with an abstracted void, i.e., a hole in the middle [2].

Just as in cubist painting, the style is rooted in Paul Cézanne's reduction of painted objects into component planes and geometric solids (cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones). According to Herbert Read, this has the effect of "revealing the structure" of the object, or of presenting fragments and facets of the object to be visually interpreted in different ways. Both of these effects transfer to sculpture. The distinction between "analytic cubism" and "synthetic cubism" also holds true in sculpture. "In the analytical Cubism of Picasso and Braque, the definite purpose of the geometricization of the planes is to emphasize the formal structure of the motif represented. In the synthetic Cubism of Juan Gris the definite purpose is to create an effective formal pattern, geometricization being a means to this end." [3]

By the early 1920s, significant Cubist sculpture had been done in Sweden (by sculptor Bror Hjorth), in Prague (by Gutfreund and his collaborator Emil Filla), and at least two dedicated "Cubo-Futurist" sculptors were on staff at the Soviet art school Vkhutemas in Moscow (Boris Korolev and Vera Mukhina). Other significant cubist sculptors include Jacques Lipchitz and Henri Laurens.

The movement had run its course by about 1925, but cubist approaches to sculpture didn't end as much as they became a pervasive influence, fundamental to the related developments of Constructivism and Futurism.

See also

References

  1. ^ Grace Glueck, Picasso Revolutionized Sculpture Too, NY Times, exhibition review 1982 Retrieved July 20, 2010
  2. ^ http://www.kodnergallery.com/gallery/modernism/bios/archipenkobio.html
  3. ^ Herbert Read, A Concise History of Modern Sculpture

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужна курсовая?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Sculpture — Sculptor redirects here. For the constellation, see Sculptor (constellation). For other uses, see Sculpture (disambiguation). The Dying Gaul, a Roman marble copy of a Hellenistic work of the late 3rd century BCE Capitoline Museums, Rome …   Wikipedia

  • Western sculpture — ▪ art Introduction       three dimensional artistic forms produced in what is now Europe and later in non European areas dominated by European culture (such as North America) from the Metal Ages (Europe, history of) to the present.       Like… …   Universalium

  • Czech Cubism — Cubist villa, Prague, Czech Republic …   Wikipedia

  • Cubism — Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d Avignon, 1907. Considered to be a major step towards the founding of the Cubist movement.[1] Cubism was a 20th century avant garde art movement, pioneered by P …   Wikipedia

  • Giacometti, Alberto — born Oct. 10, 1901, Borgonovo, Switz. died Jan. 11, 1966, Chur Swiss sculptor and painter. His father was a Post Impressionist painter, and his brother Diego was a well known furniture designer. After studying art in Geneva (1919–20) and Paris… …   Universalium

  • PARIS SCHOOL OF ART — (Jewish School of). In the history and criticism of 20th century painting, School of Paris has become a widely used term, generally designating a style that is not necessarily or typically French, but which is followed by a large number of… …   Encyclopedia of Judaism

  • Pablo Picasso — This article is about the artist. For other uses, see Picasso (disambiguation). This name uses Spanish naming customs; the first or paternal family name is Ruiz and the second or maternal family name is Picasso …   Wikipedia

  • Art, Antiques, and Collections — ▪ 2003 Introduction       In 2002 major exhibitions such as Documenta 11 reflected the diverse nature of contemporary art: artists from a variety of cultures received widespread recognition for work ranging from installation to video to painting …   Universalium

  • Otto Gutfreund — in the Foreign Legion, 1914 Otto Gutfreund (Hebrew: אוטו גוטפרוינד‎; 3 August 1889 – 2 June 1927) was a Czech Czechoslovak cubist sculptor. He is acknowledged by the art historian Douglas Cooper to be the author of the first cubist sculpture:… …   Wikipedia

  • Jacques Lipchitz — Mother and Child, bronze sculpture by Jacques Lipchitz, 1930, Honolulu Academy of Arts Birth name …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”