Alexander Archipenko was born in Kiev, Ukraine, but moved to Paris by age 22. His contact with the burgeoning style of Cubism and the movement toward abstraction led the artist to discontinue his training at the conservative École des Beaux-Arts. Instead, he studied independently at museums around the city and began to exhibit—mostly sculpture—alongside Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris and Fernand Léger, among others. When World War I began, Archipenko moved to the south of France, but because he did not have a studio, he worked primarily in two-dimensional media. Figure dates to this time and relates a new technique the artist called “sculpto-painting.” The artist described it thus: “Forms are intermixed with the patterns of colors and of the space between them…Sculpto-painting is more effective and diverse in character than the usual painting or uncolored sculpture…it facilitates the expression of the abstract.”
Details
- Artist Name: Alexander Archipenko (Russian/American, 1887-1964)
- Title: Figure
- Date: 1917
- Medium: Gouache and pencil on wove paper
- Dimensions: 12-7/8 x 9-7/8 in. (32.7 x 25.1 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection
- Accession Number: P.1953.256
- Copyright: © 2017 Estate of Alexander Archipenko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Reproduction, including downloading of ARS works is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object Information
Galka Scheyer;
Pasadena Art Institute, Pasadena, 1953-1954;
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena,1954-1975;
Norton Simon Museum, 1975.
The Galka E. Scheyer Collection
- Mills College Art Gallery, 1961-01-10 to 1961-02-19
Abstract Art Show
- Mills College Art Gallery, 1939-10-19 to 1939-12-03
The Galka Scheyer Collection: Klee, Nolde, Jawlensky, Moholy-Nagy, Schmidt-Rottluff, Schwitters, Archipenko, Kandinsky, Lissitzky, Feininger, Kirchner, Dix_1
- La Jolla, Art Center in La Jolla, 1960-07-05 to 1960-08-14
Permanent and Loan Collection, 1973
- Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1973-01-30 to 1973-12-31
Selections from the Permanent Collection
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1971-07-13 to 1971-09-19
Thirty European Modernists
- Oakland Art Gallery, 1928-01-04 to 1928-01-29
Bauhaus Painters; Spirit of Modernism: Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Oskar Schlemmer, Alexander Archipenko, Alexei Jawlensky and Others
- Seoul, Ho-Am Art Museum, 1996-02-08 to 1996-04-28
East Meets West: Russian Art from the 18th through the 20th Century
- Norton Simon Museum, 1987-10-01 to 1988-04-17
European Modernists
- Los Angeles, California School of Fine Arts, 1927-04 to ?-
The Blue Four-Galka Scheyer Collection From The Norton Simon Museum
- Henry Art Gallery, 1997-07-17 to 1997-10-05
The Spirit of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in the New World
- Norton Simon Museum, 1994-11-17 to 1996-01-14
From Europe to California: Galka Scheyer and the Avant-Garde
- Norton Simon Museum, 2003-05-16 to 2003-10-13
- The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection, Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena, 1976, no. 313 pp. 133, 135
- Barnett, Vivian Endicott, The Blue Four Collection at the Norton Simon Museum, 2002, no. 353 pp. 347-348
- Gilbert Holzgang, Galka Scheyer : Ein Leben für Kunst und Kreativität, 2023, p. 154 (ill.)
Additional Artwork by Artist
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