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Tête d’homme | 1924

22 - 27 November 2024

Exclusively for FAB Paris art fair, A&R Fleury gallery exhibited on its booth an exceptional sculpture by Ossip Zadkine. The work was presented to echo the exhibition “Modigliani / Zadkine, une amitié interrompue”, on show at the Musée Zadkine.

Produced some time after Modigliani’s death, the sculpture evokes the deep friendship between the two artists and their shared influences, while also bearing witness to the genius of Ossip Zadkine, who left his mark on the École de Paris and the history of modern art.

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Ossip Zadkine (1888 -1967)

Tête d’homme, 1924
Alabaster
38 x 22 x 20 cm | 14 15/16 x 8 5/8 x 7 13/16 inch

“Zadkine discovered that the drama of creation was played out between just three protagonists: his sensibility, the material and his hands.
Before all notions and influences, there seems to be the primordial status of sensitivity.”

Maurice Raynal

In the 1920s, the human figure became Ossip Zadkine’s almost exclusive subject, as in Tête d’homme (Head of a Man), which was carved directly into alabaster. Using the softness of the stone, the sculptor seems to follow the form of the raw material that appears through the rounded shapes and curves of the face and neck. In contrast, the hair, made of irregular grooves etched into the stone, further accentuates this effect. The face exudes that particular strength which the sculptor managed to impart to each of his pieces, a quality that critics of his time recognised even in his early works.

The simplicity of the lines endow the figure that primitive soul so dear to Zadkine, who was influenced by Romanesque sculpture as well as by “Negro fetishes” and their “Egyptian, Greek, and Assyrian brothers”—a syncretism rooted at the time in the discovery and incorporation of non-Western modes of representation in order to return to forms considered more essential and original.

The duality of the face, one part of which is engraved and carved, and the other flat and drawn, also evokes the inversion of volumes characteristic of Cubism. In 1921, Zadkine joined the movement, which he had long rejected in favour of his own sensibility, and briefly adopted its codes. His involvement remained superficial, and the artist distanced himself from it from 1924 onwards. Tête d’homme embodies the artist’s return to himself, to the more natural shapes we know him for today, but also to the singular lyricism that permeates his creations and is expressed in the characteristic use of materials from which the artist draws all his expressive power.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unlike modelling, where sculpture is created from an amorphous, malleable, and easily modifiable material, direct carving places the artist in front of a material that already possesses mass and volume, and that, in itself, already expresses something due to its long geological history when it is stone, or the phenomenon of growth when it is wood.

 

 

This technique, which was one of the conditions for the renewal of sculpture at the beginning of the century, enabled a break from the widespread practice of transposing plaster models into marble—not by the artist themselves but by skilled craftsmen. Rodin himself had remained attached to this tradition. Direct carving, as understood by Zadkine, […] allows the artist to improvise their work, conceiving it as they execute it […], in a constant state of spontaneity…

 

Ossip Zadkine, L’œuvre sculpté. Catalogue raisonné

In 1924, Ossip Zadkine was still exclusively working with the direct carving technique and stood as one of its main proponents: providing him with a direct connection to the material—wood or stone—, it formed an integral part of his artistic identity and approach to sculpture. It was the surrounding forest of his childhood that gave him this particular sensitivity to nature and materials; later, in England, his experience in cabinetmaking gave him the skills that he would continually refine throughout his career.

Zadkine arrived in Paris in 1910, discovered then the Parisian art scene and soon became a prominent figure of the École de Paris. While he formed relationships with his peers and admired certain artists—Gauguin, Rodin, De Chirico, Modigliani—the artist would always maintain a freedom in his art and practice unique to himself and unlike any other sculptor of his time.

After a difficult first few years in Paris, the sculptor slowly reached artistic maturity, which truly took root from the 1920s onwards. He developed a distinctive style and a powerful aesthetic guided by his independent spirit. As he found his own path, he met with growing critical success in France and Europe, particularly in England, Belgium and, later, the Netherlands. In 1927, Tête d’homme became part of the prestigious collection of Helena Rubinstein, a major art collector and patron of the arts, who acquired the work directly from Zadkine.

The stretching of the face, its narrow appearance, and its almond-shaped eyes inevitably evoke the figures of Modigliani, as seen in his Head created in 1911-12. A contemporary of Zadkine, he became his friend in the 1910s and shared with him the vicissitudes of a young artist’s life. Initially a sculptor, and later a painter, the artist, together with his companion, adopted an aesthetic born from shared sources of inspiration and a particular taste for non-Western art.

These connections appear evidently in Zadkine’s Tête d’homme. It shares with Modigliani’s sculptures and graphic works the extreme simplicity of the facial lines, which played an active role in the primitivist movement of the early century. The work thus appears both as a tribute to the painter who died prematurely in 1920, and as a manifesto for a radical artistic proposal, revealing the great originality of these two artists who left in both their mediums a lasting mark on their time.

To go further…

 

From 14 November 2024 to 30 March 2025, the Musée Zadkine is presenting the exhibition “Modigliani / Zadkine, une amitié interrompue”, featuring a selection of historic works produced in the 1910s and 1920s, to which Tête d’homme fully resonates.

The exhibition focuses on the mutual influences between the two artists as well as their artistic friendship, which had never been explored until now, through nearly 90 works, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, as well as period documents and photographs.

News

MODIGLIANI / ZADKINE, une amitié interrompue

14 November 2024 - 30 March 2025

Musée Zadkine, Paris

Following the exhibition dedicated to Chana Orloff, the Musée Zadkine continues to explore the artistic links forged by Zadkine throughout his life. This exhibition is the first to focus on an artistic friendship that has never been explored before: that between the sculptor Ossip Zadkine and the painter Amedeo Modigliani. Through almost 90 works—paintings, drawings, […]

MODIGLIANI / ZADKINE, une amitié interrompue

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