Jacques Lipchitz Quotes

United States, Sculptor
August 22, 1891 – May, 26, 1973.

Jacques Lipchitz (22 August [O.S. 10 August] 1891 – 26 May 1973) was a Cubist sculptor. Lipchitz retained highly figurative and legible components in his work leading up to 1915–16, after which naturalist and descriptive elements were muted, dominated by a synthetic style of Crystal Cubism. In 1920 Lipchitz held his first solo exhibition, at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie L'Effort Moderne in Paris. Fleeing the Nazis he moved to the US and settled in New York City and eventually Hastings-on-Hudson.

I remember one day when Juan Gris told me about a bunch of grapes he had seen in a painting by Picasso. The next day these grapes appeared in a painting by Gris, this time in a bowl; and the day after, the bowl appeared in a painting by Picasso.

Jacques Lipchitz
- Time
- Remember
- Painting
I am the most curious of all to see what will be the next thing that I will do.

Jacques Lipchitz

Copy nature and you infringe on the work of our Lord. Interpret nature and you are an artist.

Jacques Lipchitz
- Work
- Nature
Cubism is like standing at a certain point on a mountain and looking around. If you go higher, things will look different; if you go lower, again they will look different. It is a point of view.

Jacques Lipchitz
- Different
- Mountain
I also found so-called great art too pompous, too stiff. What at this time was called minor art was freer, more imaginative, more open to all kinds of unorthodox expression, all kinds of daring in the handling of materials, and I preferred to surround myself with this type of art than with the great collectors' pieces.

Jacques Lipchitz
- Time
- Great
- Art
All my life as an artist I have asked myself: What pushes me continually to make sculpture? I have found the answer. art is an action against death. It is a denial of death.

Jacques Lipchitz
- Life
- Art
- Death
By the early 1920s I knew that I needed to move beyond the simple cubist vocabulary I had learned and to find a new content, a new personal expression.Abstraction was never enough for me.

Jacques Lipchitz
- Simple
Imagination is a very precise thing, you know - it is not fantasy. Remember, the other day I gave you the example of what I mean, what the difference between fantasy and imagination is. I gave you the example of the man who invented the of the man who invented the wheel while he was observing another man walking.

Jacques Lipchitz

For me sculpture is divinity. This is the only answer that I could find for myself. Art is man's distinctly human way of fighting death. Through art, man achieves immortality and in this immortality we find God.

Jacques Lipchitz
- God
- Art
- Death