Editing Jacques Lipchitz (section)

==Life and career==
Jacques Lipchitz was born Chaim Jacob Lipschitz, in a [[Lithuanian Jews|Litvak]] family, son of a [[building contractor]] in [[Druskininkai]], [[Lithuania]], then within the [[Russian Empire]]. He studied at Vilnius grammar school and Vilnius Art School. Under the influence of his father he studied engineering in 1906–1909, but soon after, supported by his mother he moved to Paris (1909) to study at the [[École des Beaux-Arts]] and the [[Académie Julian]].<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NS_ZFZjfNHAC&dq=Acad%C3%A9mie+Julian&pg=PA158|title=Sculpture at the Corcoran: Photographs by David Finn|first1=David|last1=Finn|first2=Susan Joy|last2=Slack|date=March 21, 2002|publisher=Ruder Finn Press|isbn=9780972011914 |via=Google Books}}</ref>

It was there, in the artistic communities of [[Montmartre]] and [[Montparnasse]], that he joined a group of artists that included [[Juan Gris]] and [[Pablo Picasso]] as well as where his friend, [[Amedeo Modigliani]], painted ''[[Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz]]''.

Living in this environment, Lipchitz soon began to create [[Cubist sculpture]]. In 1912 he exhibited at the [[Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts|Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts]] and the [[Salon d'Automne]] with his first solo show held at [[Léonce Rosenberg]]'s Galerie L'Effort Moderne in Paris in 1920. In 1922 he was commissioned by the [[Barnes Foundation]] in Merion, Pennsylvania to execute seven bas-reliefs and two sculptures.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Lipchitz and the Avant-Garde: From Paris to New York|last=Helfenstein|first=Josef|publisher=University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign|year=2001|isbn=0-295-98187-3|pages=40–41}}</ref>

With artistic innovation at its height, in the 1920s he experimented with abstract forms he called ''transparent sculptures''. Later he developed a more dynamic style, which he applied with telling effect to bronze compositions of figures and animals.

In 1924–25 Lipchitz became a French citizen through [[naturalization]] and married Berthe Kitrosser. With the [[Nazi Germany|German]] occupation of France during [[World War II]], and the deportation of Jews to the Nazi [[extermination camp|death camps]], Lipchitz had to flee France. With the assistance of the American journalist [[Varian Fry]] in [[Marseille]], he escaped the Nazi regime and went to the United States. There, he eventually settled in [[Hastings-on-Hudson, New York]].

[[File:Jacques Lipchitz, 1917, L'homme à la mandoline, 80 cm, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou.jpg|thumb|upright|Jacques Lipchitz, 1917, ''L'homme à la mandoline'', 80 cm]]
He was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the [[3rd Sculpture International|Third Sculpture International Exhibition]] held at the [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]] in the summer of 1949. He has been identified among seventy of those sculptors in a photograph ''Life'' magazine published that was taken at the exhibition. In 1954 a Lipchitz retrospective traveled from [[The Museum of Modern Art]] in New York to the [[Walker Art Center]] in Minneapolis and [[The Cleveland Museum of Art]]. In 1959, his series of small bronzes ''To the Limit of the Possible'' was shown at Fine Arts Associates in New York.

In his later years Lipchitz became more involved in his Jewish faith, even referring to himself as a "religious Jew" in an interview in 1970.<ref name=NYPL>{{cite web | url=https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/b0bbbc60-02cf-0131-6bc1-58d385a7bbd0 | title= (text) Jacques Lipchitz, (1970) |author=Digital Collections, The New York Public Library |access-date=September 4, 2018 |publisher=The New York Public Library, Astor, Lennox, and Tilden Foundation}}</ref> He began abstaining from work on [[Shabbat]] and put on [[Tefillin]] daily, at the urging of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, [[Menachem Schneerson|Rabbi Menachem Schneerson]].<ref name="villa-camp">{{cite news |last1=Margolin |first1=Dovid |title=Sculptor Jacques Lipchitz's Tuscan Villa Turned Jewish Summer Camp |url=https://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/4100461/jewish/Sculptor-Jacques-Lipchitzs-Tuscan-Villa-Turned-Jewish-Summer-Camp.htm |access-date=4 September 2018 |date=7 August 2018}}</ref>

Beginning in 1963 he returned to Europe for several months of each year and worked in [[Pietrasanta]], Italy. He developed a close friendship with fellow sculptor, [[Fiore de Henriquez]]. In 1972 his autobiography, co-authored with [[H. Harvard Arnason]], was published on the occasion of an exhibition of his sculpture at the [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] in New York.