Flat Torso (Primary Title)
Alexander Archipenko, American, born Ukraine, 1887–1964 (Artist)
Archipenko came to Paris from the Ukraine in 1908, during the formative stage of Cubism, and was one of the first artists to translate the fractured masses and shifting planes of Pablo Picasso’s and Georges Braque’s paintings into three-dimensional form. Flat Torso incorporates several of Archipenko’s innovations: the use of highly polished bronze to diminish the sense of material density and weight and give the appearance that reflected light is traveling at a rippling speed; the compression of the figure from front to back into a wafer-thin form, which produces severe two-sided frontality; and the intensified awareness of the figure’s extremities by selectively eliminating some of their elements. The result is an elegant form,both curvaceously feminine and decisively geometric.
National Endowment for the Arts Fund for American Art
©artist or artist’s estate
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