Ossip Zadkine | |
|---|---|
 Zadkine in 1914 | |
| Born | Yossel Aronovich Tsadkin (1888-01-28)28 January 1888 Vitebsk, Russian Empire (now Belarus) |
| Died | 25 November 1967(1967-11-25) (aged 79) Paris, France |
| Resting place | Cimetière Montparnasse |
| Known for | Sculpture, painting, lithography |
| Movement | Cubism Art Deco School of Paris |
Ossip Alexeevich Zadkine (Russian:Осип Алексеевич Цадкин,romanized: Osip Alekseyevich Tsadkin; 28 January 1888 – 25 November 1967) was a Russian and French artist of theSchool of Paris.[1] He is best known as a sculptor, but also produced paintings andlithographs.[2]
Zadkine was born on 28 January 1888 asYossel Aronovich Tsadkin (Russian:Иосель Аронович Цадкин) in the city ofVitebsk, in the Russian Empire (now Belarus).[3][4] He was born to a baptized Jewish father and a mother named Zippa-Dvoyra, who he claimed to be of Scottish origin.[5] Archival materials state that Iosel-Shmuila Aronovich Tsadkin was of Jewish faith and studied in the Vitebsk City Technical School between 1900 and 1904. He also studied in theYury Pen's art school with would-be artistsMarc Chagall (then Movsha Shagal)[6] andVictor Mekler (then Avigdor Mekler). Archival materials contradict Zadkine himself and states that his father did not convert to the Russian Orthodox religion and his mother was not of a Scottish extraction.[7] He had 5 siblings: sisters Mira, Roza and Fania and brothers Mark and Moses.
Zadkine claimed in his memoir that at the age of fifteen he had been sent by his father toSunderland in the north of England, to stay with distant Scottish relatives and learn some "good manners". However, recent research has discovered that he ran away from home with a younger brother,and ended up living in Sunderland with the family of his paternal uncle, Joseph Zadkin, who had himself emigrated from Belarus a few years previously. In Sunderland he took art classes in Sunderland Town Hall and was taught to use a chisel by his uncle who was a cabinetmaker.[8] He then moved to London and attended lessons at theRegent Street Polytechnic where he won a prize for modelling in 1908[9] but considered the teachers to be too conservative.[10]
Zadkine settled in Paris in 1910. He studied at theÉcole des Beaux-Arts for six months. In 1911 he lived and worked inLa Ruche. While in Paris he joined theCubist movement, working in a Cubist idiom from 1914 to 1925. He later developed his own style, one that was strongly influenced by African and Greek art.[11]
In 1921 he obtained French citizenship.[5] Zadkine served as a stretcher-bearer in the French Army during World War I, and was wounded in action. He spent World War II in the US. His best-known work is probably the sculptureThe Destroyed City (1951–1953), representing a man without a heart, a memorial tothe destruction of the center of the Dutch city of Rotterdam in 1940 by the Nazi-GermanLuftwaffe.[12]
He taught sculpture classes atAcadémie de la Grande Chaumière until 1958, students of his included artists Geula Dagan (1925–2008),Gunnar Aagaard Andersen andGenevieve Pezet.[13]
Zadkine died in Paris in 1967 at the age of 79 after undergoing abdominal surgery[12] and wasinterred in theCimetière du Montparnasse.
His former home and studio in Montparnasse is now theMusée Zadkine.[14] When his former wife Prax died, she donated the house and art studio to the City of Paris for the formation of Musée Zadkine.[14]
There is also a Musée Zadkine in the village ofLes Arques in theMidi-Pyrénées region of France. Zadkine lived in Les Arques for a number of years, and while there, carved an enormous Christ on the Cross and Pieta that are featured in the 12th-century church which stands opposite the museum.
In August 1920, Zadkine marriedValentine Prax (1897–1981), an Algerian-born painter of Sicilian andFrench-Catalan descent.[15][16] Prax and Zadkine had no children.[17]
Zadkine was a neighbor inMontparnasse and a friend ofHenry Miller and was represented by the character "Borowski" in Miller's novel,Tropic of Cancer (1934).[14][18][19] His other neighbors there includedChaïm Soutine, andTsuguharu Foujita.[14]
While living in Manhattan during wartime from 1942 to 1945, Zadkine had a relationship with American artistCarol Janeway[20] and created several portraits of her.[21]
The artist's only child, Nicolas Hasle (born 1960), was born after an affair with a Danish woman, Annelise Hasle.[22] Since 2009, Hasle, a psychiatrist, who had been acknowledged by the artist and had his parentage legally established in France in the 1980s, has been party to a lawsuit with the City of Paris to establish his claim to his father's estate.[23][22][24]
.jpg)
.jpg)
![The Destroyed City (De Verwoeste Stad), 1951–53, bronze sculpture in Rotterdam, which is now a registered monument.[27]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aRotterdam_zadkine_monument.jpg)
Among the public collections holding works by Ossip Zadkine are:
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
