Alexander Archipenko - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Thursday, March 3, 2022 | Phillips
  • 'Archipenko builds realities. His art approaches absolute sculpture closer and closer, a sculpture which will one day amalgamate with absolute painting and absolute architecture, an art beyond all style, beyond all techniques and auxiliary means.' —Donald KarshanComing to auction directly from the highly distinguished collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, this important work by Ukrainian-born sculptor Alexander Archipenko comes with an exceptional provenance.

     

    Alexander Archipenko, ca. 1920. Alexander Archipenko papers, 1904 – 1986. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
    Alexander Archipenko, ca. 1920. Alexander Archipenko papers, 1904 – 1986. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

     

    Forms in Motion

    'In sculpture, Archipenko seeks above all the purity of forms. He wants to find the most abstract, most symbolic, newest forms, and he wants to be able to shape them as he pleases.' —Guillaume ApollinaireSupremely elegant in its careful compositional balance and attention to structural form, Statue on a Triangular Base is a preeminent example of the distinctive visual language pioneered by Alexander Archipenko during this formative period of his career. One of the earliest artists to apply broadly Cubist techniques to three-dimensional forms, the young Archipenko was a central player in the European avant-garde in the significant early decades of the twentieth century and was included in some of the era’s most definitive exhibitions, including the infamous 1911 Salon des Indépendents and the epoch-defining 1913 Armory Show in New York.

     

    Installation shot of the present work included in Archipenko: The Parisian Years, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970. Artwork: © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022
    Installation shot of the present work included in Archipenko: The Parisian Years, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970. Artwork: © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022

    First conceived in 1914 during the artist’s productive Parisian years, Statue on a Triangular Base is typical of the artist’s sculptural investigation of space, simultaneity, sensuality, and the female form that defines his finest work. Included in The Museum of Modern Art’s 1970 exhibition which took these ‘heroic years’ as its focus, Statue on a Triangular Base showcases Archipenko’s radical experimentalism with regards to the representation of volumetric movement and the fracturing of the body into simplified geometric shapes and interlocking planes. As Katherine Kuh has described, the female nude was absolutely central to this artistic project:

    'Relying on the human body, preferably the female nude, as his point of departure, Archipenko constructed his figures with architectural precision, yet rarely sacrificed the rhythms of nature. His idealized women have the elongated elegance we sometimes associate with undulating plants, sometimes with those Gothic saints which echo the soaring churches they decorate.' —Kathrine KuhWith unbridled energy and a confidently fluid sense of form, Archipenko here extracts the essence of a female figure with a remarkable lightness of touch: presented in an exaggerated contrapposto pose, the angular form of the arm is perfectly mirrored by the triangular base of the title. Poised between these two, opposing diagonal forces, the sculpture contains an enormous amount of energy and kinetic potentiality, recalling the defining sculptural image of a body in motion, Umberto Boccioni’s Forme uniche della continuità nello spazio. Arriving in Paris in 1911, the Italian Futurist first visited Archipenko in his studio the following year, no doubt admiring the sculptor’s experimental approach and incorporation of moving parts in pieces such as Médrano I.

     

    SIDE BY SIDE AND SAME SIZE
165202_FIG 3.jpg 
165202_FIG 4
CAPTION: Umberto Boccioni, Forme uniche della continuità nello spazioUnique (Continuity of Forms in Space), 1913, Museo del Novecento. Image: Mondadori Portfolio/Electa/Luca Carrà/Bridgeman Images
CAPTION: Alexander Archipenko, Médrano I, 1912, courtesy The Archipenko Foundation Artwork: © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022
    Left: Umberto Boccioni, Forme uniche della continuità nello spazio Unique (Continuity of Forms in Space), 1913, Museo del Novecento. Image: Mondadori Portfolio/Electa/Luca Carrà/Bridgeman Images
    Right: Alexander Archipenko, Médrano I, 1912, courtesy The Archipenko Foundation. Artwork: © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022

     

    Section d’Or, Cubism, and Modern Art in America

     

    'Cubism will remain a document of the newly awakened spirit of the beginning of the mathematical and geometric 20th century.' —Alexander Archipenko

    Upon his own arrival in Paris in 1908, Archipenko had been immediately swept into the revolution in pictorial representation gripping the capital, as Cubism was reimagining the question of perception for a modern world. Employing multiple and often intersecting or overlaid viewpoints, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque directly addressed the concept of simultaneity across their painting, papier collé, and reliefs of the period. This concept, and its application in the representation of form chimed closely with Archipenko’s own and allowed him to radically extend his investigation of positive and negative space, expressed here in the careful tension achieved in the work whereby  ‘that which is concave is also convex’.i Establishing a lively dialogue between material and subject, the rendering of these geometric planes in bronze further accentuates the sense of taut musculature and fluid movement achieved in Archipenko’s treatment of plastic volume.

     

    Swiftly adopted into the ranks of La Section d’Or after its formalisation as a group in the French Cubist school in 1912, Archipenko joined the likes of Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, and the Duchamp brothers in their regular meetings held in member’s homes in Puteaux and Courbevoie. The poet and critic of the age Guillaume Apollinaire championed his work, writing in Der Sturm magazine just the year before the present work was first conceived that ‘Archipenko builds realities. His art draws nearer more and more to absolute sculpture, which will one day have to blend with absolute painting and absolute architecture in order to arise as pure plasticity, beyond all styles, all techniques and methods.’ii

     

    PLEASE PLACE SIDE BY SIDE AND THE SAME SIZE 
165202_FIG 5.tif 165202_FIG 6.tif
165202_FIG 6.tif
CAPTION: Marcel Duchamp, Nu descendant un escalier, (Nude Descending a Staircase), No. 2, 1912, Philadelphia Museum of Art Image: Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950, 1950-134-59, Artwork: © Association Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2022
CAPTION: Alexander Archipenko, The Bather, 1915, Philadelphia Museum of ArtImage: Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950, 1950-134-1, Artwork: © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022

    Left: Marcel Duchamp, Nu descendant un escalier, (Nude Descending a Staircase), No. 2, 1912, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Image: Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950, 1950-134-59, Artwork: © Association Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2022
    Right: Alexander Archipenko, The Bather, 1915, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Image: Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950, 1950-134-1, Artwork: © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022 

    Alongside several important international solo exhibitions in these years, Archipenko continued to show alongside other members of the group, most notably in La Salon de ‘La Section d’Or’ held at the Galerie de la Boëtie in Paris in 1912 and the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art held at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York. Better known as The Armory Show, this exhibition was highly significant as the first, large-scale exhibition that introduced European modernism to an American audience. Included in the Cubist Room alongside Marcel Duchamp’s much-derided Nu descendant un escalier, Archipenko’s reputation as a pioneer in modernist sculptural form was internationally acknowledged.

     

    Looking more closely at Duchamp’s infamous painting, the relationship between the two artists in these formative years is striking, both in terms of their formal interests, and in Archipenko’s extension of Duchamp’s pictorial examination of the figure in movement into three dimensions. It was Duchamp too who personally convinced Archipenko to travel to America in 1920, and introduced him to Katherine Dreier, an American artist and important patron of the arts who co-founded the Société Anonyme, Inc., and gave Archipenko his first solo exhibition in the United States in 1921. Although often described as a ‘pioneer Cubist sculptor’, Archipenko went considerably further than this in his approach to plastic volume. As is clearly apparent in Statue on a Triangular Base, Archipenko ‘never merely transferred Cubist theories from painting to sculpture, he virtually invented his own kind of three-dimensional cubism’.iii

     

    Collector’s Digest

     

    •    One of the most important sculptors working in Paris between 1908 and 1920, Alexander Archipenko is often credited as being the first artist to explore Cubist principles in sculpture.

     

    •    Archipenko was included in some of the most significant group exhibitions of the early 20th century, including the 1910 Salon des Indépendants - his first public exhibition in Paris where he showed alongside Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Fernand Léger, and the Duchamp brothers – The 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art in New York, and was included in the last Cubist group exhibition at the Salon des Indépendents in 1920.

     

    •    The focus of major solo exhibitions internationally following his 1912 show at Museum Folkwang, Hagen for which the poet Guillaume Apollinaire provided the catalogue introduction, Archipenko also enjoyed considerable success in America. After the 1921 presentation of his work by the Société Anonyme, Inc., Kathrine Dreier also organised Archipenko with the Anderson Galleries in 1928. As recently as September 2021, Archipenko was the focus of Archipenko in Italy held at ML Fine Art, Milan.

     

    •    Today, his works can be found in the collections of numerous renown institutions, such as the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel, the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis, and the Tate Modern in London.


    i Katherine Dreier, International Exhibition of Modern Art arranged by the Société Anonyme for the Brooklyn Museum, (exh. cat.), New York, 1926, p. 77. 
    ii Guillaume Apollinaire, ‘Alexander Archipenko,’ in Harry E. Buckley, Guillaume Apollinaire as an Art Critic, Chicago, 1981, p. 223.
    iii Katherine Kuh, ‘Alexander Archipenko:1887 – 1964’, in Archipenko: The Parisian Years, (exh. cat.), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 20 July – 18 October 1970, n.p. 

    • Provenance

      Frances Archipenko Gray, New York
      Gifted by the above to the present owner in 1969

    • Exhibited

      New York, Perls Galleries, Alexander Archipenko: Bronzes, 29 September - 24 October 1959, p. 10 (another cast exhibited)
      Munich, Galerie Stangl, Alexander Archipenko, 14 February - 4 April 1964, no. 12 (another cast exhibited)
      Los Angeles, The University of California Art Gallery, Alexander Archipenko: A Memorial Exhibition, 24 February - 9 April 1967, no. 20 (another cast exhibited and illustrated)
      New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Archipenko: The Parisian Years, 20 July - 18 October 1970, no. 10 (this cast exhibited)
      Ontario, The Art Gallery of Ontario, Alexander Archipenko: The American Years, January - February 1971 (another cast exhibited)
      Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Fondation Maeght, Sculpture of the 20th Century: 1900-1945, 4 July - 4 October 1981 (this cast exhibited)
      Madrid, Fundación Juan March, Medio siglo de escultura, 30 November - 23 December 1981 (this cast exhibited)
      Tel Aviv Museum, Archipenko: The Early Works: 1910-1921, The Erich Goeritz Collection at The Tel Aviv Museum, 1981, pl. 15 (another cast exhibited and illustrated)

    • Literature

      Les Soirées de Paris, Paris, 15 June 1914, no. 25, p. 347 (plaster example illustrated)
      Ivan Goll, Alexander Archipenko: Retrospektive Ausstellung, Potsdam, 1921, pl. 11 (plaster example listed; titled as Femme)
      Ivan Goll, 'Archipenko,' Horizont, Vienna, 1921, no. 26, p. 78 (plaster example illustrated)
      Ivan Goll, 'Archipenko,' Ma: Aktivista-Folyóirat, vol. VI, no. 6, 25 April 1921, p. 78 (plaster example listed)
      Hans Hildebrandt, Alexander Archipenko. Son Oeuvre, Berlin, 1923, pl. 19 (plaster example illustrated; titled as Statuette)
      Lioubomir Mitzitch, Archipenko. Plastique Nouvelle, Belgrade, 1923, no. 17 (plaster example listed; titled as Femme)
      Alexander Archipenko, Archipenko: Fifty Creative Years, 1908-1958, New York, 1960, pl. 143 (another cast illustrated)
      Giovanni Sangiorgi and Gino Severini, Alexander Archipenko, Rome, 1963, no. 12, pl. 7 (another cast illustrated)
      Frederick S. Wight and Donald H. Karshan, Alexander Archipenko: A Memorial Exhibition 1967-1969, Oakland, 1967, p. 46 (another cast listed)
      Donald H. Karshan, Archipenko: International Visionary, Washington, D.C., 1969, no. 19, pl. 62 (another cast illustrated)
      Donald H. Karshan, Archipenko. The Sculpture and Graphic Art, Tubingen, 1974, p. 161 (The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970, installation view illustrated, p. 65)
      Alicia Legg, ed., Painting and Sculpture in The Museum of Modern Art. Catalogue of the Collection, New York, 1977, p. 10 (this cast listed)
      Katherine Jánszky Michaelson and Nehama Guralnik, Alexander Archipenko: A Centennial Tribute, Washington, D.C., 1987, pp. 121, 159 (another cast listed)
      Alicia Legg, ed., Painting and Sculpture in The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1988, p. 8 (this cast listed)
      Alexander Archipenko Foundation, ed., Alexander Archipenko Catalogue Raisonné, 2018, fig. S.14-06B, no. 2845 (online)

Property from The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Sold to Benefit the Acquisitions Fund

22

Statue on a Triangular Base

incised with the artist's signature, number and date 'Archipenko 1914 6/8F' on the base
bronze
75.6 x 19.7 x 14.9 cm (29 3/4 x 7 3/4 x 5 7/8 in.)
Conceived in 1914 and cast in bronze by Sheidow Foundry in 1969, this work is number 6 from an edition of 8.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£100,000 - 150,000 

Sold for £138,600

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Rosanna Widén
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20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

London Auction 3 March 2022