JACQUES LIPCHITZ, MASTER DRAWINGS:
THE ANATOMY OF A SCULPTOR

5 May - 26 JULY 2009

LATE NIGHT OPENING THURS 23 JULY TILL 9PM

Chaim Jacob Lipchitz was born in Lithuania in 1891, the eldest of six children. He studied in Vilna from 1906 and was drawn to Paris in 1909 where he first studied with Jean-Antoine Ingalbert at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts as a 'free pupil'. In 1913 he met and started life long friendships with Picasso, Gris and others of the new 'cubist' milieu. On the German occupation of Paris in 1940 he fled for the relative safety of Toulouse. As the German army extended its grip on France in 1941 Lipchitz sought asylum in the United States and escaped through the remarkable endeavours of the American diplomat Varian Fry along with many other great artists from across the cultural arena.

Jacques Lipchitz: Master Drawings -The Anatomy of a Sculptor brings together over 150 of his drawings spanning 60 years and provides a unique opportunity to engage in the narrative of this important and often described 'life long' cubist's career from Paris to New York State. It is the first British museum survey of his work since the Tate’s 1986 exhibition, 'The Lipchitz Gift, Models for Sculpture' in 1986 and the first focus on his preparatory work since 'Selected Master Drawings' toured North America in 1974-75 and then 'Between Heaven and Earth' last year in Ávila, Spain.

The exhibition encourages a renewed exploration of all Lipchitz’s prolific output. The audience can trace the revealing trails of the artist's instinctive expression of his themes literally as they develop and often in progressive groups rarely preserved or seen. Inevitably these revelations demand close attention and invite more sophisticated readings of what we mean by “cubist”. His work’s intelligent and complex investigations into some of the most challenging and pivotal moments of the twentieth century European experience, and into key changes in the understanding of the modern Western psyche, can provide trenchant insight into the work of his friends and contemporaries – Picasso, Modigliani, Soutine, Brancusi, Laurens.

The circumstances of the sculptor spending the second half of his career based in America, and of so many of his major sculptures being in collections outside the UK, mean that what academic and public interest there has been in Lipchitz in recent years has made little impact in London. Ben Uri is delighted to have the opportunity to address this by bringing this unique and extraordinary body of work from one of the major figures of the School of Paris to a London audience and will be running an extensive programme of events for visitors, schools and artists during the three month exhibition.

Finally it is fitting this remarkable exhibition from a private collection in the USA comes to Ben Uri rather than more illustrious fellow London museums as only here can history re-engage. 2009 sees Ben Uri host Jacques Lipchitz just two years short of a century after Lipchitz moved to the Paris studio / apartment at 54, Rue du Montparnasse in 1911 of his friend, fellow Litvak, Lazar Berson who went on to found Ben Uri in London in July 1915.

READ JACKIE WULLSCHLAGER'S REVIEW IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES.

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