Cubist sculpture

style c. 1909-early 1920s France Europe

Cubist sculpture grew up beside Cubist painting in Paris from around 1909 and ran through the early 1920s. Its founding gesture is usually taken to be Picasso's Head of a Woman (Fernande), 1909-10, whose faceted surfaces translate the broken planes of his paintings into three dimensions. Around Montparnasse a group of sculptors - Alexander Archipenko, Joseph Csaky, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Laurens, Ossip Zadkine - pushed the language further: volumes were shattered into facets, several viewpoints folded into a single object, and the void itself carved out as a positive element. Rooted like the painting in Cézanne's reduction of nature to cylinder, sphere, and cone, and fed by African and archaic Greek carving, Cubist sculpture culminated in Picasso's sheet-metal constructions, which fuse painting and sculpture outright.

Sculpture , plaster sculpture by Jacques Lipchitz, 1916, Tate Modern
Sculpture , plaster sculpture by Jacques Lipchitz, 1916, Tate ModernPublic domain (credit: Wmpearl) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Faceted surfaces broken into irregular planes meeting at sharp angles
  • Several viewpoints folded into one volume, fully readable only as the viewer moves around it
  • Concave set against convex form, with the void or aperture treated as positive space
  • Open planal constructions in sheet metal, string, and glass alongside traditional bronze and stone
  • Polychrome painted surfaces that blur the line between sculpture and painting
  • The body reduced to Cézanne's cylinders, spheres, and cones

Key figures

  • Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) — His Head of a Woman (Fernande), 1909-10, is commonly called the first Cubist sculpture
  • Alexander Archipenko (1888-1964) — First to work consistently at Cubist sculpture; carved the void into modern sculpture (Walking Woman, 1912)
  • Joseph Csaky (1888-1971) — First sculptor to join the Cubists, exhibiting with them from 1911
  • Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918) — Puteaux-group sculptor whose faceted figures ended with his death in war service
  • Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973) — Leading Cubist sculptor in bronze, from analytic facets to openwork mass

Example works

  • Head of a Woman (Fernande) — Pablo Picasso (1909-1910)
  • La Vie Familiale (Family Life) — Alexander Archipenko (1912)
  • The Horse (Le Cheval) — Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1914)

Sources

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