Archipenko, Alexander (ärkhĭpĕn`kō), 1887–1964, Ukrainian-American sculptor, b. Kiev. He moved to Moscow in 1906 and to Paris in 1908. There he began to adapt cubist technique to sculpture. In 1910 he opened his own art school in Paris, later moved (1921) to Berlin and established a school, and, finally, emigrated (1923) to New York City, where he also founded a school. In 1912, Archipenko introduced sculpto-painting, an attempt to unite form and color via mixed media. However, his major contribution to 20th-century sculpture was his realization of negative form. Archipenko recognized the aesthetic value of the void—the hollowed-out shape or perforation as a complement to the bulging mass—as exemplified by his Madonna in marble and the bronze Woman Combing Her Hair (1915, Mus. of Modern Art, New York City). Archipenko also worked in carved plastic lighted from within. His nearly abstract figures gained him international renown; among them are Torso in Space (Whitney Mus., New York City), Walking Girl (Honolulu Mus.), and White Torso (examples in the Chicago Arts Club and in the Fine Art Association, Phoenix, Arizona). Archipenko was also an engineer, ceramist, and teacher.

Bibliography

See his Archipenko: Fifty Creative Years: 1908–1958 (1960); D. H. Karshan, Archipenko: Schlpture, Drawings and Prints, 1908–1963 (1985); K. J. Michaelsen and N. Guralnik, Alexander Archipenko: A Centennial Tribute (1986).

Archipenko, Alexander

(born May 30, 1887, Kiev, Ukr.—died Feb. 25, 1964, New York, N.Y., U.S.) Ukrainian-U.S. sculptor. In 1908 he moved to Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts, and he soon became active in radical circles such as the Cubist movement. He began to explore the interplay between interlocking voids and solids and between convex and concave surfaces, forming a sculptural equivalent to Cubist paintings' overlapping planes and, in the process, revolutionizing modern sculpture. About 1912 he introduced the concept of collage in sculpture, and he went on to further defy tradition in his “sculpto-paintings,” works in which he introduced painted colour to the intersecting planes of his sculpture. In 1923 he moved to New York City, where he worked and taught for most of his life.

Archipenko, Alexander (1887–1964) sculptor; born in Kiev, Russia. He studied at the Kiev School of Art (1902–05), in Paris (1908–21), and settled in New York City (1923). He taught at many institutions, including Moholy-Nagy's New Bauhaus School, Chicago (1937–39), and became famous for his combinations of sculpture and painting, as in Medrano II (1914).