Past Catalogue | PRINTS & MULTIPLES OCTOBER 2022 | Date: 12 October, 2022

Lot 18
Alexander Archipenko
Lying Horizontal Figure 1957
polychrome bronze
17.0 x 36.0 x 10.0 cm
edition: 3/6

signed and numbered to base of figure: Archipenko 3
 

Provenance:

The Estate of Alexander Archipenko, New York
Bernard Danenberg Galleries, New York, 1972
Donald Karshan, New York
Rachel Adler Gallery, New York
Private collection, South Africa
Private collection, Sydney
Deutscher-Menzies, Melbourne, 15 June 2005, lot 32
Private collection, Sydney
Menzies, Melbourne, 14 September 2011, lot 26
Company collection, Melbourne
Lawson-Menzies, Sydney, 19 June 2014, lot 61
Company collection, Melbourne
Menzies, Sydney, 11 May 2017, lot 28
Company collection, Melbourne

Literature:

Coates, R. M., 'The Art Galleries, Shy Leader', The New Yorker, New York, 17 October 1959, p.144 (another example)
Archipenko, A., Archipenko: Fifty Creative Years 1908-1958, Tekhne, New York, 1960, pl.130 (illus., another example)
Karshan, D., Archipenko, Sculpture, Drawings and Prints, 1908-1963, Centre College and Indiana University Press, United States of America, 1985, pl.90a, 90b (illus., another example)
Barth, A., Alexander Archipenkos Plastisches Oeuvre, Peter Lang, Frankfurt, 1997, cat.325, pp.552-553 (another example)
Gray, F. A., My Life with Alexander Archipenko, Hirmer, Munich, 2014, p.92, pl.38 (illus., another example)
Keiser, A., The Archipenko Sculpture Catalogue Raisonné, The Archipenko Foundation, New York, 2018, [digital catalogue raisonné], cat.s.57-05, no.1373 (illus., this example)

Exhibited:

Archipenko: Recent Polychromes, Perls Galleries, New York, 14 October - 9 November 1957, cat.16 (another example)
Alexander Archipenko Bronzes, Perls Galleries, New York, 29 September - 24 October 1959, cat.26 (another example)
Archipenko, Kunstmuseum der Stadt, Düsseldorf, 4 November - December 1960, cat.61 (another example)
Alexander Archipenko: A Memorial Exhibition, UCLA Art Galleries, Los Angeles, touring to Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Centre, Colorado Springs; Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas; Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, San Diego; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, New York; Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix; Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis; Washington University, St. Louis; The Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, Chicago, 1967 - 1969, cat.55 (illus. exhibition catalogue, p.55, another example)
Archipenko: The American Years, 1923-1963, Bernard Danenberg Galleries, New York, 23 July - 15 August 1970, cat.25 (illus. exhibition catalogue, p.3, another example)
Archipenko, The Paris Years, The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 16 January - 21 February 1971, cat.39 (another example)
Archipenko: Sculpture, Drawings and Prints, 1908-1963, as Collected, Viewed, and Documented by Donald Karshan, The Norton Center for the Arts, Centre College, Danville, 1985, cat.90 (illus. exhibition catalogue pp.151, 154, 162-163, another example)
Alexander Archipenko, Moderne Galerie des Saarlandmuseum, Saarbrücken, Germany, 1986, cat.93 (illus. exhibition catalogue pp.194-195, another example)
Alexander Archipenko, Galeria Freites, Caracas, Venezuela, September - October 1991 (illus. exhibition catalogue p.30, another example)
Alexander Archipenko, Moderne Galerie des Saarlandmuseum, Saarbrücken, Germany, 17 October 2008 - 17 January 2009, cat.102 (illus. exhibition catalogue pp.164, 223, another example)
Alexander Archipenko: Sculptures, Galerie Thomas, Munich, 11 September - 31 October 2009 (illus. exhibition catalogue pp.58-59, another example)

Estimate
A$50,000
-
A$70,000
Hammer Price + BP A$58,909.00

Alexander Archipenko belonged to the early twentieth century wave of Eastern European artists who moved to the West in search of freedom, economic stability, and artistic success. Archipenko quickly followed in the footsteps of other Eastern expatriate artists, taking up residence in La Ruche, Paris in 1908. There he became a member of the prestigious Section d’Or group, putting him in the company of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), and Guillaume Apollinaire (1881-1918). By 1910 Archipenko was exhibiting with the Cubists at the Salon des Indépendants, and from 1911 to 1913 his sculpture was shown at the Salon d’Automne.

Leaving Paris for Nice, following the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Archipenko began producing sculpto-peintures, a radical form of sculpture inspired by two-dimensional art forms. Archipenko was praised by critics for reinterpreting sculpture in low relief, establishing his international reputation. So much so that when he arrived in New York in November 1923, The World reported that Archipenko was ‘considered by many persons the greatest living sculptor’.1

Archipenko ‘dematerialised’ his sculpture in the round by introducing negative spaces to denote parts of the body. For subject matter, he remained faithful to the female form, a central motif in the artist’s work. His figures of women take on the presence of real people, not in their surface naturalism, but in their essence, which he viewed as a fusion of ‘harmony, aesthetic beauty, and spirit.’2

A variety of cultural sources lie behind Archipenko’s work. He remained indebted to the spiritual values and visual effects found Byzantine culture and had a strong affinity for ancient Egyptian, Gothic, and primitive art. Consequently, Archipenko’s female figures look like fragmentary ancient statues, headless and with missing limbs and forms that evoke rather than describe.

Archipenko was at his best when endowing sculptural form with real presence. Whilst the search for a timeless representation of women brought the artist close to abstraction, he avoided complete fragmentation, and stressed instead the fluidity of the forms. Archipenko gave his female subject a clear and organic structure by assigning equal significance to every part of her body.

Lying Horizontal Figure 1957 beautifully encapsulates this totality. Comparable to Archipenko’s celebrated Torso in Space 1936 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York), this graceful, fluid figure floats in space, attached to infinity.

 

Footnotes:

1. Quoted from a newspaper clipping illustrated in Karsham, D., Archipenko: International Visionary, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C., 1969, p.70
2. Archipenko, A., Archipenko: Fifty Creative Years 1908-58, Tekhne, New York, 1960, p.35