Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko (1887-1964)
was a Russian-American sculptor. He was an innovator in translating the elements of cubist painting into sculptural form. Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko was born on May 30, 1887 at Kiev, while it was part of the Russian Empire. He was a well-known US-American avant-garde and graphic artist and sculptor with Ukrainian origins and is nowadays known as a pioneer of modern sculpting. As a son of a mechanist, he attended the Kiev Art School (KKHU) from 1902 to 1905. In 1906 he had a first exhibition but also left the Ukraine and moved to Moscow, where he got the chance to exhibit in another group show. He also got exmatriculated by the KKHU in 1906 because of his rebellion behaviour against the methods of the University.
The life of Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko
In 1908 he left Russia and went to Paris, where he attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts until he decided to quit because of personal reasons. In 1911 he founded his own art-school in Paris where he was teaching from 1912 to 1914. Another organisation was founded by him in Berlin, where he lived during 1921 and 1923. Four of Archipenko`s Cubist statues, including Family Life and five of his drawings, appeared in the controversial Armory Show in 1913 in New York City. These works were caricatured in the New York World. He became a member of the Section d`Or in 1912, where he met the painter Pablo Picasso. He was the major innovator of collage in sculpture, bringing a whole range of new and unlikely materials into play. Following the example of Picasso and Braque, he broke with Western tradition and used holes in his figures.
Influences on his works
While he lived in Berlin, he met Gela Forster, a young female sculptor, a day he went to Dresden. She was a member of the Dresden Secession group. Both married in 1921, but the marriage got divorced and he married again; Frances Archipenko-Gray was his wife in second marriage. In 1923 he immigrated to the USA, where he worked at several art schools. He first worked as a teacher at the Washington State University in 1935/36 and founded another own school in 1937 in Chicago, named the "School of Creative Fine Arts". Furthermore he was teacher at the Bauhaus Academy. In 1939 he moved back to New York, the place he once arrived the day he came to America, and did some experimental work. During the following years he crafted some illuminated figures made of lucent materials. There were numerous exhibitions in Europe and other places in the U.S. On February 25, 1964 he died in New York. Most of his decedent estate is nowadays exhibited at the Saarland-Museum. He wanted the museum to be the bequest of 107 gypsum figures and the organisation accepted the inheritance. The gypsum sculptures where given to it because he was a friend of Rudolf Bornschein, the director at that time. In 1960 the house dedicated a huge retrospective to the famous sculptor. Because the Saarland Museum bought many of the art and sculptures of the carver, it is nowadays a museum that offers a widespread review of Archipenko`s work during the years 1908 and 1963. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection and the National Museums and Galleries of Walesis are holding works by him. He is one of the most famous cubistic artists worldwide. The famous figure Standing Woman you will find in our shop.