.jpg?maxwidth=3840)
Lot 195 Property from the Estate of Gerald Tsai, Jr.
Alexander Archipenko (1887-1965)
Family Life
Closed6 November 2008
Price Realised
USD 40,000
More Information
Specialist note
The Archipenko Foundation will include this work in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of sculptures by Alexander Archipenko.
According to Donald Karshan, Family Life was originally conceived as a six foot sculpture in white plaster depicting two full-length figures with a child. The work was first exhibited at the Paris Salon d'Automne and in New York at the infamous Armory Show of 1913. Due to its fragile nature the plaster was presumably destroyed on its shipment back to Paris. "In 1935, Archipenko made a reconstruction in terracotta of the upper portion only (which he apparently considered the vital segment) in the same life-size scale as the original plaster. From this terracotta, in 1968, the estate issued an edition...No casts were made during the artist's lifetime" (in op. cit., 1985, p. 20).
According to Donald Karshan, Family Life was originally conceived as a six foot sculpture in white plaster depicting two full-length figures with a child. The work was first exhibited at the Paris Salon d'Automne and in New York at the infamous Armory Show of 1913. Due to its fragile nature the plaster was presumably destroyed on its shipment back to Paris. "In 1935, Archipenko made a reconstruction in terracotta of the upper portion only (which he apparently considered the vital segment) in the same life-size scale as the original plaster. From this terracotta, in 1968, the estate issued an edition...No casts were made during the artist's lifetime" (in op. cit., 1985, p. 20).