Some Russian sites call him an artist of the "Russian abroad". With the same success it could be called French artist(he lived in France from 1908 to 1921), German (in Berlin, 1921-1923), American (1923-1964, until his death).
In Moscow, he stayed only 2 years (1906-1908).
Considering that Alexander Archipenko was born in Kyiv and lived there until the age of 19 (his father is a professor at Kyiv University, his mother is the daughter of the icon painter Mokhovoi), then we with good reason we can also call him a Ukrainian sculptor.
Although, what a sin to hide, his homeland, observing the wonderful tradition of “supplier of talents to the world”, gave birth to him and forgot. His name was banned in Soviet Ukraine, along with the names of Malevich and Kandinsky in Soviet Russia. Most of his works created in the tsarist empire were destroyed. (The names of Malevich and Kandinsky were incarnated in the post-Soviet space, but this cannot be said about Alexander Archipenko.)
Today, his name can sometimes be heard at lectures on art or read in rare, mostly specialized, publications and on websites. But the sculptures of Alexander Archipenko, who conquered the world, a wide range people in Ukraine are generally unknown.
And it's very embarrassing. Because modern designers and sculptors all over the world in many ways “feed” on his ideas.
So let's get to know him. He deserves fame in his homeland (in the world he is well known even without us).
Alexander Archipenko was called "the most impressive sculptor of our time" (French poet and art critic Apollinaire). He was considered the founder of cubism in sculpture. If Pablo Picasso was a "cubic" revolutionary in painting, then Archipenko was in sculpture.
One of the legislators of world art. Most famous sculptor 20th century. One of the pillars of world art of the 20th century.
His works have been and are exhibited in the most prestigious museums: the Solomon Gallery, the Pompidou Center, the Modern Art Museum, the Guggenheim Gallery (New York), museums in Stockholm, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Moscow. And also his works can be seen today in Ukraine: in the National art museum Ukraine, the National Museum. Sheptytsky in Lvov.
What outstanding has this sculptor created?
In order to realize the contribution of any artist to that structure, which is not always clear, separated from ordinary life, where the chosen ones fall, but at the same time it seems to be open to everyone - what is called " World culture”, - you need to understand the personality of the artist.
And in this sense, the cheerful, and then scandalous, story of the creation of the Red Thinker will be very indicative for us today. He was 19 years old when a local landowner ordered him a sculpture on a free theme. Young Archipenko sculpted a male sculpture from terracotta, exaggeratedly grotesque (sorry for the tautology), covered it with red enamel and exhibited it in one of the village shops. At the same time, he put up a sign saying that workers and peasants can visit the exhibition at a reduced price. The representative of the local government did not like this very much.
“The first visitor was a police officer… “Why should the workers and peasants pay less?” Then I saw "Thinker".“What is he thinking about and why is he red?” The policeman saw this as a symbol, ”the artist later said.
He will describe the personality of the artist and the fact that the young student Archipenko expressed dissatisfaction with the teaching methods at the Kiev Art School and was expelled from there for freethinking (in 1905).
In 1908 he already lived in France, where he went to study. Together with Modigliani, he went to museums and studied the traditions of Gothic, Assyria, Greece, and Egypt. At the same time, he managed not to drown in the classics, but created his own unique style.
Ideas and finds of Alexander Archipenko
His works were so unusual and interesting that the students themselves went to him, although Alexander Arkhipenko went to France to find a teacher.
- He was the first to use the cubic form in sculpture, dumbfounding everyone by the fact that he did not hew compositions, but built them from various geometric shapes. And this was not a tribute to fashion (how easily Arkhipenko entered cubism, so easily he left), but the desire to show the pattern of cosmic creation: matter is born from chaos, and an ordered body is born from matter.
The famous "Gondolier", style: cubism, 1914
- Cubism was only a way for the artist to search for artistic truth. He was constantly looking for new ways to embody artistic ideas.
The famous "Boxers", 1914. Style: cubism. Guggenheim Museum, New York
- One of his innovations is "sculptural painting", where color emphasizes the relief, and the relief complements the color. He was the first in sculpture who began to paint the surface with paints, having felt the artistic value in the works of old masters.
Pierrot Carousel, 1913, Guggenheim Museum, New York
“We see that nature never separates forms from color, but only in different cases combines them into infinite heterogeneity,” said the sculptor.
- The idea of voids in sculpture belongs to Alexander Archipenko, and not to Henry Moore, as is commonly believed. This new idea artistic expression - the idea of deepening, embodied in the form of emptiness. The space (emptiness) inside the sculpture is used by him as a pictorial element, equal in strength to the material one.
It was an Archipenkov find - open molds. There is no circle line without emptiness. Both of these elements dissolve into each other, creating themselves.
"Woman combing her hair", 1915
“It is the absence of something, and not the presence, that is the cause, the impulse of the motive of creation. This process is present in nature as a hidden force and is the main creative stimulus for the creation of new forms of life. - Alexander Archipenko.
- "Archipenkian style" in sculpture: a combination of metal, plastic, cement, wood, terracotta, pearls, glass. Now in the design of space and sculptures, this seems mundane, but someone had to be the first. And that someone was A. Archipenko.
"In the boudoir" (In front of the mirror), 1915. Oil, graphite, photography, metal, wood, 1941
- Modern moving billboards exist due to the fact that in 1912 the sculptor came up with, and in 1924 he created archipentura - “moving painting”. This is a complex mechanism that, with the help of narrow colored stripes, created picturesque compositions.
Archipentura, 1924. Archipenko Foundation, New York
Archipentura, 1924, Archipenko Foundation, New York
Engineering design of the archipentura
- On the world exhibition in Chicago in 1933 there was also a Ukrainian pavilion organized by . One of the halls was decorated with 48 works by Archipenko. The collection was valued at 25 thousand dollars! For comparison: Pontiac could be bought in those days in America for 1 thousand dollars. The collection was valued at a fabulous sum.
- The sculptor experimented not only with the inner essence of things, but also with the outer: he even paid attention to how the sun would illuminate the composition at different times of the day. Creating positive and negative effects of the sculpture, he provided lighting for each time of the day.
- Alexander Archipenko taught at 17 universities and art educational institutions(5 of them were founded by the master himself in Paris, Berlin, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago).
- He was recognized in 1923 as "the most outstanding sculptor after Rodin.
In 1906 he moved to Moscow, and in 1908 to Paris. There, in the biography of Archipenko, the development of his cubic technique in sculpture was initiated.
In 1910, Alexander opens his own art school in Paris. In 1921 he moved to Berlin, where he also established a school. And finally, in 1923, Archipenko emigrated to America, to New York. There he founded a school for the third time in his career.
In 1912, Alexander Archipenko's biography presented a new technique of sculpture-painting, developed in an attempt to combine form and color together. However, Archipenko's main contribution to the art of the 20th century is that he worked on conflicting forms. He realized the aesthetic value of emptiness. Archipenko is known for his hollow forms with punched holes as a complement to the bulging masses. This sculptural trend is reflected in the following sculptures: marble "Madonna", bronze "Woman Combing Her Hair" (1915, Museum of Modern Art, New York).
Archipenko also worked on carved plastic, glowing from within. His figures close to abstraction brought the author international fame. Among them are "Torso in Space" (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York), "Walking Girl" (Honolulu Museum), "White Torso" (Chicago Art Club). Biography Alexander Archipenko was also an engineer, potter, and teacher.
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Alexander Porfiryevich Arkhipenko(May 30, 1887, Kyiv, Russian empire- February 25, 1964, New York, USA) - American sculptor and artist Ukrainian origin, one of the founders of Eastern cubism in sculpture.
Biography
Born in Kyiv. Father, Porfiry Antonovich Arkhipenko, served as a mechanic at Kiev University. After studying two classes at the Valker real school, Alexander in 1902 moved to the Kiev art school, from which he was expelled in November 1905 for participating in a student strike caused by the beginning of the revolution of 1905-1907. In 1906, together with Alexander Bogomazov, he organized the first exhibition of his works in Kyiv.
In the same year he moved to Moscow, where he continued his education at the Moscow School of Painting, Architecture and Sculpture.
In 1909 he moved to Paris. In 1909-1914 he lived in the international colony of artists "Hive" (fr. La Ruche), in 1910 he exhibited at the Salon of Independents together with A. Exter, Malevich, Picasso, Braque, Derain and others. The first solo exhibition was in Hagen (Germany, 1912). In 1921 he opened his own school-studio in Berlin.
In 1923 he moved to the United States, in 1929 he received American citizenship. In 1934 he designed the Ukrainian pavilion at an exhibition in Chicago. From 1937 he taught at the New Bauhaus. Buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.
Creation
Archipenko's works are close to cubism: what cubist artists before him experimented with in painting, he transferred to sculpture. He actively used the so-called "negative space" in sculpture.
Confession
Archipenko's works are presented in many major museums Europe, USA, Israel. 12 of his drawings are in State Hermitage. In 2016, a street in Kyiv was named after Arkhipenko.
Personal exhibitions
- 1922 - Frankfurt am Main
In fiction
Julio Cortazar's novel 62. Assembly model," Mr. Whitlow tells Marrast of "a colleague who once sold Archipenko's materials."
Gallery
King Solomon. 1963 Philadelphia
Madonna. Ilana Gore Museum, Jaffa
Carl von Weinberg. 1961, Bronze. frankfurt
Grave of Alexander Archipenko at Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York
Alexander Porfiryevich Arkhipenko
Alexander Archipenko was born in Kyiv on May 30 (June 11), 1887. His father, Porfiry Archipenko, being a mechanic, was in charge of university laboratories and physics rooms. A talented person, the author of many small, easily made inventions, he constantly improved various complex mechanisms. This craving for invention was inherited by Alexander.
But the greatest influence on the boy was his grandfather - Anton Arkhipenko. He was an artist, and from childhood Alexander adopted from him a special love for art from stories about the great masters of the world, their lives, successes and glory. From childhood, having become acquainted with art, Sasha firmly decides to devote himself to it.
In 1902, Alexander entered the Kyiv Art School, where he studied painting and sculpture until 1905. In his hometown he gets the basics art education and then continues it in Moscow. Here are his first exhibitions. The formation of Arkhipenko's artistic worldview continues in Paris. While studying at the School of Art, he studies old sculpture in museums and at the same time shows his work at exhibitions.
“The path of A. Archipenko,” writes the researcher of the sculptor Pavel Kovzhun, “the upbringing and maturation of talent is especially interesting, if only because, in addition to the tireless search for his self-expression, he was always courageous to the point of pragmatism. Archipenko grew up in the full sense of the word on a new art school. FROM early years he sought to seize the material: already in his first works, naturalism is manifested, signs of a stylistic mode, which then came out of his "archaic". young artist showed that he was looking for a language strong and convincing, but very simple. This path led A. Archipenko to the block. He began a long struggle with her until he made her an obedient substratum, from which he was able to extract a completely new form.
Already in 1910, while still a very young artist, Arkhipenko arranges solo exhibitions in The Hague and Berlin. By that time, he was in the forefront of the fighters for the new art - he took an active part in the Parisian artistic life. He joins the Cubist group, where he introduces his views on art and creativity. This group turned out to be the center that generated new revolutionary artistic ideas.
P. Kovzhun writes:
“Thus began a significant period in the work of the master, which brought him world fame. It is closely related to his cubist method. After all, cubism is indeed in the first place - the principle of a strict system. The predominance of analysis over feeling, noted in Cubism, is primarily a need for ordering. If a work strives for orderliness, a clear order - it approaches synthesis, and then the word is up to the artist. Actually, cubism made a major revolution in contemporary art then, when he taught how to build an image: so did Archipenko's method in sculpture taught how to build a form and move plastic to unexpected possibilities ...
…Arkhipenko's art grew in energetic waves. He mastered innovative tasks one after another and went from success to success. He created an individual method and transformed it with his own perception. It was then that Archipenko's art became on the verge of genius. His works reached the top artistic expressiveness and skill, as the highest manifestation of individuality. “Art is not what we see - but only what we have in ourselves” - this is what the master says, revealing his view of creativity, defining the essence of his creative act as active, not passive energy. Passive art is fine approach (naturalism-realism), active - that which builds new forms, new imaginative possibilities.Arkhipenko created these new forms, new possibilities, obeying internal creative impulses, spoke such a plastic language that had its own means of expression, refined for the deepest communication with those who perceived new world creative vision."
So in 1912 Archipenko departed from the Cubists. He feels that the Cubist theory limits his creativity and dooms him to some kind of formalism.
In the same year, the sculptor founded his own school in the capital of France, and then made big Adventure with an exhibition of his works in the main European art centers - in Italy, Sweden, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia. And everywhere the work of Archipenko, and there were more than 65 of them, are a great success. It was a real triumph for the Ukrainian artist, who attracted all of Europe with his creativity and bold searches.
They do not forget about him in Ukraine either: in Lvov, in 1922, a small monograph on the artist's work, written by M. Golubets, was published, and in 1923, a large monograph with an article by Hans Hildebrandt.
At the beginning of the twenties, in the capital of Germany, Archipenko again founded a school, gathering around him many students. However, already in 1923 the sculptor left Europe and moved to America permanently. He is now opening a school with a very broad art program in the USA.
In 1924, he designed the so-called mobile painting, known by the name of its creator - "archipentura". Its essence is that with the help of a complex mechanism, narrow colored stripes were set in motion, creating certain compositions, changing the images according to the author's intention. Later, such a sculpture was called "mobiles", and one of the most prominent representatives it was the American Alexander Calder Jr.
In the USA, Archipenko arranged about thirty of his exhibitions. Here Archipenko not only spent his last years(he died in New York on February 25, 1964), but also summed up all his many years of tireless creative work. In recent years, his art has reached great masculinity, determination, major art forms.
In addition to sculpture, Archipenko did a lot of painting. Color, tone never left the artist indifferent. He was the first to introduce painted planes into modern plastic art - he showed the form in color interpretation. The same craving for color led him to painting. The work of Arkhipenko the artist is as original and expressive as his sculpture. The big, strong master easily and bravura feels and sees the form in color, harmonizing it with tonal chords.
Unfortunately, the fate of the master's works, which with great difficulty nevertheless ended up in their homeland, cannot be called a happy one. In the autumn of 1935, the collection of the Lviv National Museum included the gift of Arkhipenko - the sculpture “Ma. Thought" - one of three compositions, united under the name "Ma". Through the efforts of the director of the museum, I. S. Svintsitsky, nine more works received from the author were later added to it - two paintings and seven drawings.
In the autumn of 1936 in the Museum of the Scientific Association. T. Shevchenko exhibited the terracotta composition "Shevchenko the Prophet", transferred to the collection National Museum later, in 1940.
The rest of the works, including sculptures, disappeared without a trace in 1952 during an unprecedented act of removal from the museum and the destruction of numerous "ideologically harmful, nationalist" heritage. Only photographs published in the magazine "Mistetstvo" and catalogs remained.