Lot 228 D

According to Christa Lichtenstern, the present work is an “original bronze, in that it is a bronze cast after a model Zadkine had intended for casting in bronze and in that the artist had supervised the casting, as is attested by his monogram.” Like Ionel Jianou, Lichtenstern erroneously dates the cast to 1966/1967, after a model made - according to Sylvain Lecombre - in 1941/1944. Lecombre's catalogue raisonné, however, dates the edition of eight casts of this size to 1975. The present cast was made for Mme Paget, an employee of the Susse Foundry.
Ossip Zadkine had produced the terracotta model of the “Musicien au repos”, on which the bronze is based, during his time in exile in America in the first half of the 1940s. Having travelled the US in the 1930s, the artist left Paris for New York in 1941 and lived there until 1944. Thanks to his contacts with American gallerists and other European émigré artists, he settled in quickly and successfully established himself in the American art scene. He had his first solo exhibition at the Wildenstein Gallery as early as October 1941; two further solo presentations followed in 1943 and 1944. In March 1942 he was one of twelve European artists to participate in the exhibition “Artists in Exile” at the Pierre Matisse Gallery. He was also able to resume teaching, which he had begun in Europe in the 1930s. In his work he continued to explore the subjects that had dominated his oeuvre before his emigration - torsos, heads, mythological figures and depictions of sculptors and musicians.
Ionel Jianou wrote about the importance of music and depictions of musicians in Zadkine's oeuvre: „[…] la musique est pour lui un vrai recueillement. Mélomane chevronné, il connaît à fond les oeuvres classiques et s'interésse toujours aux nouvelles creations. Est-il besoin de rappeler que dans l'oeuvre des presque tous les cubists, les instruments de musique abondent […]? On serait tenté d'affirmer qu'il existe un rapport intime entre la musique et la géométrie; ce rapport explique la présence répétée de ces instruments dans les oeuvres cubists. Plus de trente ouvrages développent le thème musical […]. La plupart témoignent de l'esprit apollinien par leur composition harmonieuse, leur rythme et leur construction rigoureuse.” (Ionel Jianou, Zadkine, Paris 1964, p. 59).