Morice Lipsi

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Morice Lipsi 1963

Morice Lipsi (born April 29, 1898 as Israel Moszek Lipchytz in Pabianice near Łódź , Congress Poland , Russian Empire ; † June 7, 1986 in Küsnacht - Goldbach near Zurich , Switzerland ) was a French sculptor of Polish descent. In the period after the Second World War he was one of the most important sculptors of abstract , monumental stone sculptures .

Life

In 1912, Morice Lipsi left his Polish homeland at the age of fourteen and moved to his brother in Paris . He settled in the La Ruche artist colony , where many international artists lived during this time, such as Marc Chagall , Chaim Soutine , Amedeo Modigliani , Ossip Zadkine , Guillaume Apollinaire and others. In 1927 he met the Swiss painter Hildegard Weber (1901–2000) in Paris; the two married three years later. In 1933 Lipsi received French citizenship and moved to Chevilly-Larue near Paris. In 1942 he fled to Switzerland because of his Jewish origins. After the war he returned to Chevilly-Larue, where he mainly lived and worked for the following decades. In 1983 he was awarded the Order of Commander of the Arts and Literature ( Commandeur de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres ) for his special merits . In 1984 French President François Mitterrand made him Knight of the Legion of Honor . In 1982 he moved to Küsnacht-Goldbach near Zurich , where he died in 1986.

Artistic development

Groupe musicale (1923), one of Lipsi's early works made of Macassar ebony
Groupe de deux femmes , Lipsi's first work to be given a place in public space, in the Parc Montsouris in Paris (1939).

Young years and the interwar period

Even in his earliest youth, Lipsi showed great talent for drawing. From 1912 he learned the subject of an ivory carver from his much older brother Samuel Lypchytz (1875–1942) in Paris. From 1916 he studied for a short time at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. After that he experimented mainly on his own with sculptures and developed his own style in it. The first successes were slowly emerging. In 1922 he had his first solo exhibition with ivory sculptures at the Hébrard Gallery in Paris. Other exhibitions soon followed in Paris, for example at the Galérie d'art contemporain (1927) and the Galérie Druet (1935). In 1930 he had his first exhibition abroad, in the Zurich art salon of Dr. Störi . In 1931 he took part in the international sculpture exhibition at the Zurich Kunsthaus . For the 1937 Paris World Exhibition , Lipsi was commissioned to design a gable relief above the Pont Alexandre entrance portal and a relief in the pavilion of the Architects' Club.

In this early creative period, figures based on Auguste Rodin and works with a tendency towards Art Deco were created . Despite friendly relations with Ossip Zadkine and Henri Laurens and contacts with other avant-garde artists such as Alberto Giacometti , Constantin Brancusi and Fernand Léger , Lipsi's work remained unaffected by the abstract sculpture for the time being. He regularly visited Chartres Cathedral for study purposes , also together with Henri Laurens. In addition to ivory figures, sculptures made of wood, cement, plaster, limestone, baked clay and bronze were created. During the first years of the war, Lipsi had to get by in the Charente , mainly with regional orders. It mainly concerned works with religious motifs, which were kept in an antique-like, strictly figurative language of forms. In 1945 Lipsi was found in the Kunsthalle Bern, united with Marino Marini , Germaine Richier and Fritz Wotruba .

Period after World War II

Tectonic (1958) in the sculpture garden of the Kunsthalle Mannheim

Shortly after the Second World War, Lipsi's sculptural work experienced a turn towards abstraction. He created more and more abstract stone sculptures using the taille-directe method , whereby the desired shape was carved directly into the stone - exclusively by hand. From 1955 he was particularly interested in working in lava rock. The formats of his new works tended towards the monumental. These new works appealed to a whole new audience and received a lot of international attention. Countless exhibitions in galleries and art museums followed. In 1959 Lipsi took part in documenta 2 in Kassel . The Paris gallery Denise René organized a solo exhibition for him. In 1963, 1964 and 1967 Lipsi took part in international sculpture symposiums in Japan , Slovakia and France (chair). The high points of this creative period were the works Océanique I and the 12 m high Ouverture dans l'espace , which were given an honorable place in public space on the occasion of the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964 and in Grenoble in 1968 - in Tokyo in front of the Olympic Stadium, in Grenoble on the main access road to the city.

In the following years Lipsi became a sought-after sculptural designer of public space with public contracts across France, a state gift from France to Iceland and purchases in Germany and Israel . In the later post-war period, Lipsi was one of the most important representatives of large-scale stone sculpture. From 1979 onwards Lipsi mainly worked as a draftsman for health reasons. After his death, works by Morice Lipsi regularly found a place in public exhibitions in galleries and museums.

Museums with works by Morice Lipsi

The Lipsi Collection in Hadlikon-Hinwil near Zurich provides the best overview of Lipsi's career and works . Well-known museums in various countries have other works by the artist:

Works in public space

Various of the works created by Lipsi are in the public space and can be viewed there.

The 12 m high stone sculpture Ouverture dans l'espace , created for the Olympic Games in Grenoble in 1968

In France

  • Paris, Parc Montsouris : Groupe de deux femmes , 1939.
  • Brillac Church (Charente): La vierge à l'enfant , 1941.
  • Abzac (Charente) , Place Morice Lipsi: Le berger et ses moutons , 1941.
  • Church of Adriers (Vienne): L'Ange musicien , 1941.
  • Chevilly-Larue (Val de Marne), Maison de la Culture: Dominante incise , 1957–58,
  • Port-Barcarès (Pyrenées-Oriëntales), Musée du sable: Atlantique , 1961,
  • Ladiville (Charente): Saint Christophe , 1961–62.
  • Nevers (Nièvre), Sainte-Bernadette-Banlay church: baptismal font, two altars, tabernacle, 1966.
  • Grenoble (Isère), Route de Lyon: Ouverture dans l'espace , colonne olympique, 1967.
  • Grenoble (Isère), University of St. Martin d'Hères: L'Adret , 1967.
  • Marly -Frescaty (Moselle), Collège Jean-Mermoz: La percée-regard vers le haut , 1970–71.
  • Chalon-sur-Saône (Saône et Loire), Maison de la culture: Sur pivot III , 1971.
  • Lannion (Côtes-d'Armor), Lycée national: Dialogue de la tangente et de la verticale , 1971–72.
  • Plan de Canjuers (Var), military campus: Canjuers haut dans le ciel , 1972–74.
  • Rostrenen (Côtes d'Armor), Collège d'ET: Sculpture spatiale , 1974-75.
  • Vitry-sur-Seine (Val de Marne), pedestrian zone: fountain sculpture , 1975.
  • Clouange- Vitry (Moselle), CES: Clouange-Vitry , 1975.
  • Montélimar (Drôme), Lycée d'ET (ch. Des Catalins): Montélimar, haut dans le ciel , 1976.
  • Grenoble (Isère), Art Museum Park: La grande vague , 1978.
  • Chevilly-Larue (Val de Marne), roundabout Av. Ch. De Gaulle: Hieros , 2010 (bronze cast of the original from 1963).
Das Rad (1964) on Friedrichsplatz in Mannheim

Outside France

  • Mannheim (Germany), Friedrichsplatz near the water tower: The wheel , 1960.
  • Tokyo (Japan), Olympic Stadium: Océanique II , 1963.
  • Vyšné Ružbachy (Slovakia): Au Tatra , 1966,
  • Tel Aviv (Israel), vol. Ben Gurion: La Kabbalistique , 1966.
  • Querceta-Lucca (Italy), open-air museum: Rencontre dans l'espace , 1969.
  • Reykjavík (Iceland), Place de France: Complexe en élévation II , 1969.

literature

  • Gabrielle Beck-Lipsi: Morice Lipsi 1898-1986. Itinéraire d'un sculpteur abstrait au XXe siècle . Edition du Griffon Neuchâtel, 2018 (monograph with many illustrations in French).
  • Sandra Brutscher: Morice Lipsi (1898–1986). The sculptural work . Publishing house Dr. Kovac, Hamburg 2018 (Writings on Art History; Volume 71) (Dissertation, Saarland University Saarbrücken, 2012).
  • Martina Ewers-Schultz: In the footsteps of Marc Chagall, Jewish artists from Russia and Poland , exhibition catalog Kunstmuseum Ahlen, 2003 and Kulturspeicher Würzburg, 2004.
  • L'École de Paris, 1904-1929. La part de l'Autre. Musée d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2000. Paris: Paris-Musées, 2000.
  • Jeanine Warnod: La Ruche & Montparnasse, le chapitre “Moryce Lipsi et Paul Maïk, joyeux et infatiguables” , Exclusivité Weber, Genève / Paris, 1978.
  • Roger van Gindertael: Morice Lipsi , Neuchâtel, ed. Du Griffon, 1965.
  • Heinz Fuchs: Morice Lipsi . Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim, 1964.
  • Roger van Gindestael: Lipsi , Paris, coll.Prisme, H. Hofer, 1959.
  • Exhibition catalog for documenta II (1959) in Kassel: II.documenta'59. Art after 1945 . Catalog: Volume 1: Painting; Volume 2: Sculpture; Volume 3: Graphic Art; Text tape. Kassel / Cologne 1959.

Web links

Commons : Morice Lipsi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ [1] Sikart , the digital lexicon on art in Switzerland.
  2. ↑ Gabrielle Beck-Lipsi: Morice Lipsi 1898 - 1986 , Neuchâtel, 2018.
  3. ↑ idem.
  4. ↑ [2] Sikart .
  5. ↑ Gabrielle Beck-Lipsi: Morice Lipsi , 2018.
  6. ↑ [3] Sikart .
  7. ↑ Gabrielle Beck-Lipsi: Morice Lipsi , 2018.
  8. ↑ idem
personal data
SURNAME Lipsi, Morice
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lipszyc, Morice
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH April 29, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Łódź , Congress Poland , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 1986
Place of death Küsnacht - Goldbach near Zurich , Switzerland