The archive of Jacques Lipchitz consists of material dating primarily from the period 1916-41. Of particular note within the archive are Jacques Lipchitz's diaries, address books and notebooks, and his sketches and studies - especially those related to his sculpture 'Prometheus Strangling Vulture'. There are also some selected writings of Jacques Lipchitz, his correspondence with a host of European artists and critics, and business correspondence with French and American museums and officials. Finally, there is a large amount of personal correspondence between Jacques Lipchitz and his family, including his brother Rubin and his first wife Berthe.
Personal and professional papers of Jacques Lipchitz
This material is held atTate Archive
- Reference
- GB 70 TGA 897
- Dates of Creation
- 1910-1973
- Language of Material
- French Russian Yiddish English Spanish German
- Physical Description
- 25 boxes
Scope and Content
Administrative / Biographical History
Jacques Lipchitz (22 August [O.S. 10 August] 1891 – 26 May 1973) was a Cubist sculptor. He was born to a Jewish family in Druskieniki, present day Lithuania, then a part of the Russian Empire. In 1909 he came to Paris and started to study art at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and Academie Julian, holding his first solo exhibition, at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie L'Effort Moderne in 1920. Lipchitz lived in Montparnasse and was a part of the so called School of Paris (Ecole de Paris). His circle of friends included Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, Marc Chagall, Juan Gris and other artists and writers, mostly of the Russian-Jewish origin. In 1916 Jacques Lipchitz met Berthe Kitrosser, a poet from Bessarabia (Moldova) whom he oficially married in 1926. In 1924 he naturalized as a French citizen. In 1922 he joined an art group l'Esprit Nouveau. In 1926 he moved to the house built for him by Le Corbusier, at 9 Allée des Pins à Boulogne-sur-Seine. Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s he became involved with the French communist party and pro-Soviet artists in Paris, especially Boris Tasilitzky, Ilya Ehrenburg and Sergey Lomov, a publisher of the art and literature magazine 'Udar'.
In 1935 he travelled to the USSR and tried to negotiate with the political police for the release of his brother Paul Lipchitz and his step-son Andre Shimkevitch. He also hoped to obtain some commissions from Soviet art and political authorities but both of his entreprises failed.
Back in France he participated in the International Art Fair of 1937 in Paris with his sculpture 'Prometheus Killing the Vulture' which was later destroyed by right-wing politicians. Followingthe Fall of France in 1940 Lipchitz was forced to flee the country for the United State, where he settled in New York. Though he tried to return to France in 1946, he eventually returned to the USA, where he became famous as an American sculptor and naturalized as an American citizen in 1958. He divorced Berthe and married sculptor Yulla (Yulia), nee Halberstadt, in 1947. Besides his archive, the Tate also holds a large collection of his plaster maquettes.
Arrangement
Arranged in original order/in alphabetical order/in chronological order.
Access Information
OPEN
Custodial History
Part of material was kept by its creator, Jacques Lipchitz and given to his brother Rubin Lipchitz before 1941. The letters from Jacques to Rubin Lipchitz were initially kept by Rubin. Correspondence of Berthe Lipchitz-Kitrosser was added to the Jacques Lipchitz archive at some point. In 1990s the whole collection was roughly classified and re-housed by the historian from the Courtauld Institute, Catherine Putz, who contributed to the seminal exhibition of Jacques Lipchitz at the Museo de Reina Sofia in Madrid (1997), wrote about the collection and published some correspondence from it.