COLLECTION NAME:
Visual Resources Teaching Collection
mediaCollectionId
ArtArtHiAAH~7~7
Visual Resources Teaching Collection
Collection
true
Image Record ID:
aahi0012960
image_record_id
aahi0012960
Image Record ID
false
Work Title (display):
Médrano II
Image Title:
full view
Work Dates (display):
1914-1915
Work Dates type:
creation
Image Date (display):
2014-12-08
Work Creator (display):
Alexander Archipenko (Ukrainian, 1887-1964)
Work Creator gender:
male
work_creator_or_agent_gender
male
Work Creator gender
false
Work Creator notes (display):
Ukrainian sculptor, active in Paris and in the USA. He began studying painting and sculpture at the School of Art in Kiev in 1902 but was forced to leave in 1905 after criticizing the academicism of his instructors. In 1906 he went to Moscow, where, according to the artist, he participated in some group exhibitions (Archipenko, p. 68). In 1908 he established himself in Paris, where he rejected the most favoured contemporary sculptural styles, including the work of Rodin. After only two weeks of formal instruction at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts he left to teach himself sculpture by direct study of examples in the Musée du Louvre. By 1910 Archipenko was exhibiting with the Cubists at the Salon des Indépendants, and his work was shown at the Salon d'Automne from 1911 to 1913. A variety of cultural sources lies behind Archipenko's work. He remained indebted throughout his career to the spiritual values and visual effects found in the Byzantine culture of his youth and had a strong affinity for ancient Egyptian, Gothic and primitive art that co-existed with the influence of modernist styles such as Cubism and Futurism. The decade following Archipenko's arrival in Paris was his most inventive and includes works produced during his residence at Cimiez, near Nice (191418), and throughout a period of extensive travel in Europe (191821). His first sculptures, such as Woman with Cat (1911; Düsseldorf, Kstmus.), in their stress on solid mass, showed the impact of Pre-Columbian art. By 1912 he had opened his own art school in Paris, and works such as Walking Woman (1912; Denver, CO, A. Mus.), a bronze female figure made up of interlocking convex and concave pieces on a flat supporting shape, were more directly related to Cubism. Influenced by the Cubist notion of integrating the figure with surrounding space, by 1914 Archipenko had begun to interchange solids and voids by incorporating effects of light in his sculpture, so that protruding elements seemed to recede and internal features to advance. In Woman Combing her Hair (bronze, 1914; New York, MOMA), the massive head is pierced by a hole, an absolute reversal of solid and void that took one step further Archipenko's characteristic exchange of concave and convex forms. His use of voids as positive forms, in doing away with the traditional monolithic concept of sculpture, had broad-ranging implications for other artists. Boxing Match (painted plaster, 1914; New York, Guggenheim) is one of Archipenko's most renowned sculptures of the Cubist years. It is nearly abstract in form, but, as the title suggests, its subject is the tension and struggle of opposing forces; depending on the viewpoint, the cylindrical shapes look like the heads and torsos of two combatants or like silhouetted fighters engaged in dynamic opposition. Further sculptural innovations were initiated by Archipenko in his first constructions in painted materials, influenced both by the collages of Picasso and Braque and by the Futurist concepts published in Boccioni's La scultura futurista (1912). Medrano II (1914; New York, Guggenheim; see fig.) describes the volumes of a figure in articulated planes. The circus clown represented here is attached to a coloured back panel that serves to clarify the composition. The main volumes of the body are represented by intersecting planes, curving planar forms and wedge- and cone-shaped elements. Colour articulates structure and helps to distinguish the varying materials. In 1914 Archipenko developed a form that he called sculpto-painting, which he defined as 'a new character of art, due to its specific interdependencies of relief, concave or perforated forms, colours, or textures' (Archipenko, p. 40). He felt that this art form was more adaptable to artistic invention than traditional painting and sculpture in that it emphasized the inherent qualities of form and colour, bringing pictorial surfaces and sculptural volumes into a dynamic unity and exploiting new technical means and materials. He made almost 40 sculpto-paintings before 1920, and another concentration of these works appeared in the late 1950s. In The Bather (1915; Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A.) a woman holds a towel in her upraised arms as she steps from a tub. The figure is composed mainly from wooden and metal elements and is integrated with the surrounding drawn and painted space through conic sections, Archipenko's idiosyncratic version of Cubist facets. Archipenko was represented in the New York Armory Show of 1913 and in many international Cubist exhibitions. In 1921 he moved to Berlin and opened an art school. In 1923 he settled in the USA and established a school in New York City. He initiated a summer programme in Woodstock, New York, in 1924, which continued until his death. In 1927 he was granted a patent for his invention of the 'peinture changeante' (or Archipentura), a motorized mechanism for the production of variable images in sequence. This machine (which in his view combined the scientific with the emotional), as well as his incorporation of electric light and actual movement into his work, revealed his continued attraction to the Futurist urge to represent the dynamism of the modern era. In the 1930s and 1940s Archipenko's style changed to a classicizing naturalism, and he turned to traditional sculptural materials such as bronze, marble and ceramics to produce more restrained and elegant works. Bronze sculptures included his Torso in Space (1935; Jerusalem, Israel Mus.), and ceramic works included the terracotta The Bride (1937; Seattle, WA, A. Mus.). During this period he also lectured and taught art at numerous colleges and universities throughout the USA and Canada. In the 1950s he again concentrated on industrial materials, in which he demonstrated his taste for dazzling polychromy, for example in the series of reliefs initiated in 1957 in polychrome wood and bakelite, including works such as Oval Figure (1957; artist's estate, see Karshan, 1974, p. 153). Notable features of work of his late years were his indebtedness to his cultural origins and a deep spirituality. It is, however, for the freshness of his explorations of sculptural mass and space and for his innovative multi-media constructions that Archipenko received his greatest acclaim. (Groive Art Online accessed 2007-10-17)
Work Worktype:
metalwork
work_type
metalwork
Work Worktype
false
Work Worktype:
sculpture (visual works)
work_type
sculpture (visual works)
Work Worktype
false
Work Category (VRC classification):
sculptures and installations
work_category__ucbaahvrc_classification_
sculptures and installations
Work Category (VRC classification)
false
Work Material and Technique (display):
painted tin, glass, wood, oilcloth
Work Measurements (display):
127 cm (H) x 51.7 cm (W) x 43.2 cm (D)
Work Location (Repository or Site) name:
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Work Location (Repository or Site) role:
repository
Work Location (Geographic) name:
New York, New York
Image Source Reproduction citation:
Milner, John. Vladimir Tatlin and the Russian Avant-Garde. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Print.
image_source_copy_from_print_name
Milner, John. Vladimir Tatlin and the Russian Avant-Garde. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Print.
Image Source Reproduction citation
false
Image Source Reproduction refid:
0-300-02771-0
Image Source Reproduction page number:
75
Image Source Reproduction plate-figure number:
72
Image Source Reproduction refid type:
ISBN
Image Rights (display):
© Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Image Rights fair use checklist:
1) use of this image is for education and educational research; 2) access is restricted to University of Colorado and Auraria Higher Education Center communities; 3) the original photographer is credited if known; 4) the image is published; 5) the amount of the work in relation to the whole is needed for education or educational research; 6) the number of derivatives is the minimum required for education or educational research; 7) the image has not been found to be reasonably available for sale; 8) duplication of the image does not violate preexisting contracts.
Work Rights (display):
public domain
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Holding Institution:
University of Colorado Boulder
Collection:
Art and Art History Visual Resources Center
Collection info and contact:
For information about this collection, see