Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts

Provenance:

Estate of the artist

Exhibited:

This cast or another cast of the same work has been included in the following exhibitions:
Salon d'Automne, Paris, France, 1913 (original plaster exhibited)
The Sculpture of Jacques Lipchitz, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, May 18-August 1, 1954, no. 2, p. 22, illus.
Jacques Lipchitz: Skulpturen und Zeichnungen 1911-1969, Neue National Galerie, Berlin, September 18-November 9, 1970, no. 1, p. 45, illus.
Jacques Lipchitz: Selected Sculpture, Reliefs and Drawings 1911-1972, Marlborough Gallery, New York, November 7-December 3, 1985, no. 1, p. 7, illus.
Jacques Lipchitz: A Survey 1911-1973, Marlborough Fine Art Ltd., Tokyo, October 16-December 7, 1985, no. 1, p. 13, illus.
Jacques Lipchitz: Esculturas, Galeria Fernando Quintana, Bogota, Colombia, October-November, 1987, no. 1, illus.
Jacques Lipchitz: A Life in Sculpture, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, December 15, 1989 -March 11, 1990, no. 1, p. 60, illus.
Jacques Lipchitz: The Paris Years, Marlborough Gallery, New York, 1996, no. 1, p. 5, illus.
Lipchitz and the Avant Garde: From Paris to New York, Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, September 22, 2001-January 6, 2002, no. 2, p. 72, illus.
Jacques Lipchitz, Sculpture and Drawings 1912-1972, Marlborough Gallery, New York, February 10-March 6, 2004, no. 1, p. 5, illus.

Recorded:
Reynal, Maurice. Jacques Lipchitz. Paris: Éditions Jeanne Bucher, n.d., illus., p. 23.
Patai, Irene. Encounters: The Life of Jacques Lipchitz. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1961, no. 14, illus.
Lipchitz, Jacques. My Life in Sculpture. New York: The Viking Press, 1972, p. 7, illus., p. 5.
Stott, Deborah. Jacques Lipchitz and Cubism. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1978, p. 9, illus. p. 273.
Wilkinson, A. The Sculpture of Jacques Lipchitz: A Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 1, The Paris Years 1910-1940, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996, no. 6, p. 37, illus.
Putz, Cathy. Jacques Lipchitz: The First Cubist Sculptor, London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2002, no. 1, p. 6, illus.
Curtis, Penelope. “Deco Sculpture and Archaism,” in Art Deco 1910-1939. London: V&A Publications, 2003, p. 54, illus. p. 53.
Kramer, Hilton. "Why Jacques Lipchitz was Left by Wayside: Aspired to Greatness,” The New York Observer, March 15, 2004, pp. 1, 16, illus.
Henry, Clare. "Sculptors Poles Apart but of Their Age," Financial Times, March 3, 2004, p. 9.

Related works:

Draped Woman (fragment from Woman and Gazelles), 1911-12, plaster, Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Gazelle (fragment from Woman and Gazelles), 1911-12, bronze, The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania.

Receiving considerable acclaim when it was exhibited in the 1913 Salon d’Automne in Paris, Woman and Gazelles is perhaps Lipchitz's most famous early work. Sculpted in a classical and naturalistic manner, this highly accomplished piece immediately predates the artist's turn toward Cubism in 1913. As art critic Hilton Kramer wrote in The New York Observer about the Lipchitz exhibition held in March 2004: "From the earliest work in the exhibition—the elegant Woman and Gazelles—we know we're in the presence of a master.”[1]

Jacques Lipchitz moved from his hometown in Lithuania to Paris in October 1909 to pursue a career in art. Despite encouragement and financial support from his mother, his move was bold for numerous reasons. As a Jew, leaving Lithuania (then a part of Imperial Russia) was difficult, requiring authorization from the Tsarist government. Lipchitz left the country illegally, against the wishes of his father, who envisioned his son’s future in engineering. He arrived in Paris an artistic naïf, with no formal art training (again due to anti-Semitic government restrictions), exposed only to a severely provincial culture and no knowledge of recent developments in art.

But Lipchitz’s innate talent helped him to learn quickly. He initially studied carving at the École des Beaux-Arts, but he was unfulfilled with study there and left to enroll simultaneously at the Académie Julian for sculpture and at the Académie Collarossi for drawing. Unlike most artists who experiment with painting at some point in their careers, Lipchitz was firmly committed to sculpture, preferring to work as a modeler, building his pieces up from clay. Before long, he became an expert in the range of possibilities of cast metal, working most often in bronze.

Lipchitz took full advantage of the many artistic opportunities that Paris had to offer, making frequent trips to museums and art galleries in the city. At the Louvre, he would find examples of ancient art depicting the Mistress of the Animals, a Near Eastern deity who contributed characteristics to the Greek goddesses Aphrodite and Artemis. The Mistress of the Animals often appeared symmetrically flanked by animals that she had either tamed or captured. Woman with Gazelles evokes this traditional subject matter. Because of the peaceful nature of her association with the gazelles and also because of her nudity, she is less of an Artemis—the huntress—and more of an Aphrodite—the goddess associated with fertility.

Rooted in classical tradition, the woman stands with her weight shifted to her right foot, her head bent to look gently down toward the gazelle on her right. The animal, in turn, meets her gaze. She reaches out with both hands and tenderly touches each animal on the throat, indicating the trust between animal and human. A drape that apparently slipped from her shoulders hangs over her left arm, touching the ground, the fabric continues behind, forming a graceful swag that extends to her right hand. Her physical connection to the animals creates a single, sinuous line that flows from one end of the work to the other, peaking with the crown of her head at center.

1913 was a breakthrough year for Lipchitz for it was the first time since his arrival in France that his work was critically acclaimed; all praise was directed to the one work he exhibited: Woman with Gazelles. The work received additional attention when it was subsequently reproduced in such prestigious magazines as Art et Décoration that same year. It is apparent that Lipchitz’s work inspired Paul Manship’s most famous sculpture: Dancer and Gazelles of 1916, now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington.