© Estate of Alexander Archipenko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
On view
Modern Art
Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Gallery
Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Gallery
Flat Torso
Alexander Archipenko, 1887–1964; born Kiev, Ukraine; active and died New York, NY
y1990-28
Flat Torso exemplifies Archipenko’s aim to create an optical style of sculpture in which the viewer perceives the figure through shape and a sensation of lightness rather than the experience of mass in three-dimensional space. From certain angles, Archipenko’s sculpture appears to be the nude body of a woman with her torso torqued and weight resting on the forward leg. This pose recalls the contrapposto stance, a dynamic pose developed in classical Greek statuary and later adopted by Italian Renaissance sculptors to accentuate the musculature of the human form and suggest that the figure bears weight. From other angles the sculpture appears to be an abstract column, twisting and spiraling upward.
More About This Object
Information
Title
Flat Torso
Maker
Medium
White marble on gray marble base
Dimensions
sculpture: 38.1 x 9 x 3.9 cm (15 × 3 9/16 × 1 9/16 in.)
base: 9.6 x 11.3 cm (3 3/4 × 4 7/16 in.)
Credit Line
Bequest of Sophie Goldberg Bargmann and Valentine Bargmann
Object Number
y1990-28
Signatures
Signed on base: Archipenko
Culture
Type
Materials
Sophie Goldberg Bargmann and Valentine Bargmann, bequest; to Princeton University Art museum, 1990.
- Katherine Jánszky Michaelsen, Archipenko: a study of the early works, 1908-1920, (New York: Garland Pub., 1977). , p. 34; p. 175, cat. no. S49 (as Flat Torso, or Torso, Torso of a Woman);
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1990," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 50, no. 1 (1991): p. 16-69., p. 37
- Sarah Arvio, "Master and torso", Society of Fellows of the American Academy in Rome news (Fall, 2009)., p. 12 (illus.)
