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inscribed J. Lipchitz, dated 13, numbered 3/7 and stamped with the foundry mark C. Valsuani cire perdue Sotheby's New York. Lipchitz arrived in France from his native Lithuania in October 1909. Unlike many other foreign artists of his generation who settled in Paris- Picasso, Brancusi, Archipenko and Modigliani- he had little previous academic training. He enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and his early sculpture has much in common with the continuation of the classical tradition represented by the work of Bourdelle and Maillol. It was not until 1913, when he met the artist Diego Rivera- who was already painting in the cubist idiom- that Lipchitz came into contact with the artistic avant-garde. Such encounter radically changed the direction of his art and this work, executed at a crucial point in the artist's career, reflected Lipchitz's assimilation of disparate influences, ranging from hellenistic sculpture to the work of his contemporaries. In Danseuse, the various elements of the body were rendered in a simplified schematic manner, and every part was kept distinct by an emphasis on the junctures of planes. This work carried an estimate of between US $ 150,000 and 200,000. |
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