Alexander Archipenko

Exhibited by Willoughby Gerrish

Material copper, wood, metal, paint

Dimensions 68.6 × 35.6 × 10.2 cm

Place of Creation United States

Status Vetted

About the Work

This work is recorded in the Archipenko Foundation archives with the no. 459 and is published in the Archipenko sculpture catalogue raisonné under the same number. The Archipenko Foundation records a second relief construction of Ballerina, in a slightly different size and variant (work 5430).

Ballerina is a notable polychrome relief construction within a group of works from the late 1950s, which drew inspiration from revisiting ideas of constructions and sculpto-paintings —the innovative mixed-media reliefs that Archipenko had pioneered in Europe in the context of French Cubism.

“My old works contain elements of the new, and the new contain elements of the old,” he remarked in his publication Fifty Creative Years. Several of these new works from the Fifties were first showcased in 1957 in New York in a solo exhibition (Recent Polychromes) at Perls Galleries.

Ballerina perfectly illustrates Archipenko’s lifelong exploration of material, colour, form, and movement, as well as of ideas of dance and music.

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Provenance

Frances Archipenko Gray, 1964 (by bequest from the artist).
Private collection, 2004.

Literature

Archipenko, Alexander. Archipenko: Fifty Creative Years 1908-1958. New York: Tekhne, 1960 plate no. 10.
Barth, Anette. Alexander Archipenkos plastisches Oeuvre, Teile I und II. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang: 1997. [Doctoral diss., University of Trier, Germany] p. 530, 531 cat no. 314.
Alexander Archipenko Foundation, Alexander Archipenko Catalogue Raisonné, S.57.2A, no. 459, http://archipenkocr.org/ (accessed on June 26, 2023).