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Musical Instruments

Jacques Lipchitz 1924

The patinated plaster sculpture is one of Lipchitz's most significant works. Together with the Harlequin with mandolin, also part of the collection on display here, it represents the sculptor's Cubist period. Both refer to a theme that was particularly dear to Lipchitz, that of music, treated in numerous works, such as in the bas-reliefs made between 1922 and 1925 that the American collector Albert C. Barnes, introduced to him by the French art dealer Paul Guillame, commissioned him to make.
The back of the sculpture also bears the artist's signature.

Technical information

Author: Jacques Lipchitz
Title: Musical Instruments
Date: 1924
Material and technique: Plaster coated with shellac
Size: 57,2x67,9x30,5 cm
Location: Palazzo Pretorio Museum
Third Floor

The work in question features one of the most popular subjects among the artists of the Cubist avant-garde, from Picasso to Braque to Juan Gris, his close friend. As on the occasion of a number of still-life reliefs made in 1918, Lipchitz here again confronts contemporary Cubist pictorial research, giving it a plastic resolution to create a lively composition. This was his philosophy: to look at space in order to shape it in his own way.