(Kiew 1887–1964 New York)
Head (Construction with crossing planes), inscribed Archipenko 1913, number on the base 0/6, 1913  conceived in 2013, cast between 1957 and 1964, bronze with dark brown  patina, 38,3 x 28,2 x 20 cm

Mrs Frances Archipenko Gray has kindly confirmed the authenticity of the present work as a lifetime bronze. It will be described as such in the catalogue raisonné, which is currently in preparation.

Written certificate from The Archipenko Foundation, Bearsville, New York, October 2014

Provenance:
Fischer Fine Art, London
there acquired in 1975 by the current owner
Private collection, Italy

Exhibition:
New York, Alexander Archipenko: The Parisian Years, retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, 1970 (first Archipenko exhibition held in New York);
Toronto, Archipenko: The Paris Years, Art Gallery of Ontario, January/February 1971, exhibition catalogue no. 7;
London, Tatlin’s dream: Russian Suprematist and Constructivist Art 1910-1923, Fisher Fine Art Limited, November 1973-January 1974;
Bordeaux, Les Cubistes, Musée des Beaux Arts/Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1973, exhibition catalogue, page 43, plate 50;
Rome, Alexander Archipenko, Ente Premi Roma, 1963, exhibition catalogue no. 9, plate 5 (with an essay by Gino Severini) – this cast was there acquired by Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome.

Literature:
Carola Giedion-Welcker, Contemporary Sculpture, An Evolution in Volume and Space, New York, 1960, page 84;
Dictionnaire de la Sculpture Moderne, ed. by F. Hazan, Paris, 1960, page 8;

Alexander Archipenko et al., Archipenko: Fifty Creative Years, 1908-1958, New York, 1960, plate 182;
Giovanni Carandente, Dizionario della Scultura Moderna, il Saggiatore, Milan, 1967, page 16;

Giovanni Sangiorgi, “La Pittura Scultorea di Archipenko,” in Civiltà delle Macchine, volume XI, no. 5, September-October 1963, page 38;

Maurizio Calvesi, “Futurismo e Orfismo,” in L’Arte Moderna, volume V, no. 43, 1967, page 273;
E. Roters, Avantgarde Osteuropa 1910-1930: Ausstellung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (Kunstverein Berlin), ed. by Akademie der Künste, 1967, page 81, plate 92;
D. Ripley-D. Scott-G. Habasque, Archipenko: International Visionary, Donald H. Karshan (ed.), Washington, D.C., 1969, page 41, plate 38;
Douglas Cooper, The Cubist Epoca, ed. Phaidon, 1971, page 243, plate 293;
Jean Luc Daval, Journal de l’Art Moderne 1884-1914, ed. by Skira, Geneva, 1973, plate 269;

Andrei B. Nakov, Studio International, December 1973, volume 186 (work mentioned);
Donald H. Karshan, Csaky, ed. by Depot 15, Paris, 1973, page 16;
Palma Bucarelli, La Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome-Valle Giulia, ed. by Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, Rome, 1973, page 210;

Donald H. Karshan, “Les Révolutions d’Alexandre Archipenko,” in Plaisir de France, no. 421, July 1974, page 16, plate 17;
Albert E. Elsen, Origins of Modern Sculpture: Pioneers and Premises, New York, 1974, plate 70, page 52;

Donald H. Karshan, Archipenko. The Sculpture and Graphic Art, Tübingen, 1974, page 19;
Donald H. Karshan, Archipenko. Sculpture, Drawings and Prints, 1908-1963, Indiana, 1985, no. 18, page 59-61;

Anette Barth, Alexander Archipenkos plastisches Oeuvre, Frankfurt, 1997, no. 330, page 561 and 563

One cast of this bronze belongs today to the following public collections: Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome
Saarland Museum, Sarrebruck
Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection, Washington D.C.

Originally conceived as a wooden sculpture in 1913, the most innovative period of Archipenko’s career, Head: Contruction with crossing planes was cast in a bronze edition between 1957 and 1964. The influence of Cubist and Constructivist art were combined by Archipenko to produce his experimental polychrome sculptures or “sculpto-paintings” that combined the concrete three-dimensional with real highlights and shadows of one, with the illusionistic advantages of the other. To understand the importance of the revolutionary work of this artist let’s listen the words of Donald H. Karshan , North America’s collector and expert , on the work of Alexander Archipenko:

An important , unpublished photograph (…) brings us into one of the galleries of the Salon des Independants in Paris. The time is March 1914:in several months, Europe would be plunged into war. The walls of the gallery are filled with paintings in the Cubist manner; the four sculptures that can be seen are by the Ukrainian artist Alexander Archipenko, then twenty-six years age. He had arrived from Kiev via Moscow some five years earlier and these works, along with those in another room of the exposition, were causing a sensation among critics and artists (…). Never before had such shapes and such conglomerations of materials been dared by an artist. Only Guillame Apollinaire defended them in the forum of public opinion, the Parisian journals. The research of Archipenko created the first modern sculpture which is a multi-material construction, a successful combination or blending of innovative devices into one cohesive entity of abstracted concave and convex shapes (…).

(….) “Head: Construction with crossing planes” was conceived in 1913 as a sketch for the monumental 7-ft. high “Woman in front of a mirror”: torso and head of wood and sheet metal, painted, were reflecting in a real mirror on which is panted a still life and the right arm of the mannequin, seated on real furniture elements.
As most of the great constructions made by Archipenko before World War I, this work was probably destroyed. An inestimable loss when considering that as much of constructivist and constructivist-assemblage sculpture that followed this epic series were in a sense their progeny.(…) Archipenko was the most influential sculptor of the first quarter of his century. The question is no longer which sculptors he influenced as which sculptors he didn’t influenced.
For Boccioni we think of “Unique forms of continuity in space”, for Gabo “Constructed head n.2”, for Picasso “Glass of Absinthe” or, more recently “Guitar”. Balla’s “Fist of Boccioni-Lines of force” of 1915,is obviously indebt to “Boxers”.