Harlequin and Mandolin

There is a plaster relief by Jacques Lipchitz, Harlequin and Mandolin on the third floor that is one of the most evocative pieces in the museum. Lipchitz is a fundamental figure of the cubist movement and the avant-garde of the 20th century.
The Harlequin character is depicted here in a very simplified anatomical version, with angular and asymmetrical shapes, without canonical proportions. The face is crushed and consists of two overlapping planes. As the mask is only identifiable by the dashed diamonds on the surface of a shoulder and hip, the mandolin is at the centre of the composition and merges with everything else. We don't see his hands. Furthermore, his feet are just sketched in plaster.
Lipchitz's cubist sculpture, dedicated to art and music, shows the influence of colleagues Pablo Picasso, Georges Braques and Juan Gris, with whom he had also worked in 1917, in the transition from primitive art to pure formal stylization.
The works of Jacques Lipchitz can be found in many of the world's major museums, but the Museum of Palazzo Pretorio in Italy holds the largest collection of Lipchitz's work. In 1974, a few months after the death of the artist, his widow Yulla Lipchitz came to Prato with Henry Moore to witness the inauguration of his sculpture, Square form with cut, located in Piazza San Marco. Yulla was very impressed by the interest in the art shown by the city and suggested that she could donate a part of her husband's plaster cast library. During 2011, the Prato collector Giuliano Gori and the art historian Kosme de Barañano helped establish relations between the Municipality of Prato and the Lipchitz Foundation.