Ossip Zadkine

Zadkine was born on 28 January 1888 as Yossel Aronovich Tsadkin ({{langx|ru|link=no|Иосель Аронович Цадкин}}) in the city of Vitebsk, in the Russian Empire (now Belarus).{{cite web|url=http://www.zadkine.paris.fr/ossip-zadkine/sa-biographie/une-enfance-en-russie|title=Une enfance en Russie|work=paris.fr|date=19 March 2013 }}{{cite web|url=http://chagal-vitebsk.com/node/155|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120305212642/http://chagal-vitebsk.com/node/155|url-status=usurped|archive-date=5 March 2012|title=Людмила Хмельницкая. Витебское окружение Марка Шагала|work=chagal-vitebsk.com}} He was born to a baptized Jewish father and a mother named Zippa-Dvoyra, who he claimed to be of Scottish origin. Archival materials state that Iosel-Shmuila Aronovich Tsadkin was of Jewish faith and studied in the Vitebsk City Technical School between 1900 and 1904. He also studied in the Yury Pen's art school with would-be artists Marc Chagall (then Movsha Shagal){{cite journal |last1=Diment |first1=Galya |title=Yehuda Pen, The Sholem Aleichem of Painting |journal=Ars Judaica the Bar Ilan Journal of Jewish Art |date=1 January 2021 |volume=17 |issue=1 |pages=61–86 |doi=10.3828/aj.2021.17.4 |url=https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/full/10.3828/aj.2021.17.4 |access-date=23 June 2024 |language=en |issn=2516-4252|url-access=subscription }} and Victor Mekler (then Avigdor Mekler). Archival materials contradict Zadkine himself and states that his father did not convert to the Russian Orthodox religion and his mother was not of a Scottish extraction.{{cite web|url=http://chagal-vitebsk.com/node/200|archive-url=https://archive.today/20120730022229/http://chagal-vitebsk.com/node/200|url-status=usurped|archive-date=30 July 2012|title=Александр Лисов. Цадкин и Витебск|work=chagal-vitebsk.com}} He had 5 siblings: sisters Mira, Roza and Fania and brothers Mark and Moses.

Zadkine claimed in his memoir that at the age of fifteen he had been sent by his father to Sunderland in the north of England, to stay with distant Scottish relatives and learn some "good manners". However, recent research has discovered that he ran away from home with a younger brother,and ended up living in Sunderland with the family of his paternal uncle, Joseph Zadkin, who had himself emigrated from Belarus a few years previously. In Sunderland he took art classes in Sunderland Town Hall and was taught to use a chisel by his uncle who was a cabinetmaker.Cathy Corbett, "Ossip Zadkine: The reinvention of an émigré sculptor". Essay in catalogue for Zadkine aan Zee/ Zadkine by the Sea exhibition at Museum Beelden aan Zee, Den Haag, October 2018 - Feb 2019 (Waanders Uitgevers, 2018) He then moved to London and attended lessons at the Regent Street Polytechnic where he won a prize for modelling in 1908Regent Street Polytechnic School of Art prizewinners Book, Archive of Regent Street Polytechnic, University of Westminster but considered the teachers to be too conservative.{{cite web|url=https://www.sculptureinternationalrotterdam.nl/en/kunstenaars/ossip-zadkine-2|title=Ossip Zadkine, 1888–1967|work= Sculpture International Rotterdam}}

Zadkine settled in Paris in 1910. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts for six months. In 1911 he lived and worked in La Ruche. While in Paris he joined the Cubist movement, working in a Cubist idiom from 1914 to 1925. He later developed his own style, one that was strongly influenced by African and Greek art.{{cite web|title=La source grecque, l'enracinement d'une "terre"|url=http://www.zadkine.paris.fr/fr/ossip-zadkine/sa-biographie/la-source-grecque-lenracinement-dune-terre|work=paris.fr|date=14 May 2012 }}

File:Zonder titel PK-F-EAA.6791.jpg

In 1921 he obtained French citizenship.[http://biography.yourdictionary.com/ossip-joselyn-zadkine Ossip Joselyn Zadkine Facts], YourDictionary Zadkine served as a stretcher-bearer in the French Army during World War I, and was wounded in action. He spent World War II in the US. His best-known work is probably the sculpture The Destroyed City (1951–1953), representing a man without a heart, a memorial to the destruction of the center of the Dutch city of Rotterdam in 1940 by the Nazi-German Luftwaffe.{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=FtsQAAAAIBAJ&pg=4848,5178621&dq=ossip-zadkine&hl=en|title=Sculptor Dies|date=27 November 1967|newspaper=The Age|access-date=20 April 2010|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130115104203/http://news.google.ca/newspapers?id=FtsQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=YpMDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4848,5178621&dq=ossip-zadkine&hl=en|archive-date=15 January 2013}}

He taught sculpture classes at Académie de la Grande Chaumière until 1958, students of his included artists Geula Dagan (1925–2008), Gunnar Aagaard Andersen and Genevieve Pezet.{{Cite web|last=Hauer|first=Caroline|date=20 March 2019|title=Paris: Le Messager, une oeuvre monumentale d'Ossip Zadkine – Quai d'Orsay – VIIème|url=https://www.parisladouce.com/2019/03/paris-le-messager-une-oeuvre.html|access-date=12 June 2020|website=Paris la Douce|language=fr}}

Zadkine died in Paris in 1967 at the age of 79 after undergoing abdominal surgery and was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse.

His former home and studio in Montparnasse is now the Musée Zadkine.{{Cite web|title=Musée Zadkine|url=https://www.artiststudiomuseum.org/studio-museums/musee-zadkine/|access-date=12 June 2020|website=Artist's Studio Museum Network}} When his former wife Prax died, she donated the house and art studio to the City of Paris for the formation of Musée Zadkine.

There is also a Musée Zadkine in the village of Les Arques in the Midi-Pyrénées region of France. Zadkine lived in Les Arques for a number of years, and while there, carved an enormous Christ on the Cross and Pieta that are featured in the 12th-century church which stands opposite the museum.

In August 1920, Zadkine married Valentine Prax (1897–1981), an Algerian-born painter of Sicilian and French-Catalan descent.{{Cite book|last=Birnbaum|first=Paula J.|title=Women Artists in Interwar France: Framing Femininities|publisher=Routledge|year=2017|isbn=9781351536714|pages=130}}{{Cite book|last1=Wolpert|first1=Martin|title=Modern Figurative Paintings: The Paris Connection|last2=Winter|first2=Jeffrey|publisher=Schiffer Publishing|year=2004|isbn=9780764319624}} Prax and Zadkine had no children.{{Cite book|last1=Prax |first1=Valentine Henriette|title=Benezit Dictionary of Artists, Oxford Art Online|year = 2011|doi=10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.b00145672}}

Zadkine was a neighbor in Montparnasse and a friend of Henry Miller and was represented by the character "Borowski" in Miller's novel, Tropic of Cancer (1934).{{cite web|title=Musée Zadkine|url=http://www.millerwalks.com/content/musee-zadkine|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304053830/http://www.millerwalks.com/content/musee-zadkine|archive-date=4 March 2016|work=Walking Paris with Henry Miller}}Frederick Turner: Renegade: Henry Miller and the Making of "Tropic of Cancer", Yale University Press, 2012. His other neighbors there included Chaïm Soutine, and Tsuguharu Foujita.

While living in Manhattan during wartime from 1942 to 1945, Zadkine had a relationship with American artist Carol Janeway{{Cite book|last1=Jenssen|first1=Victoria|title=The Art of Carol Janeway: A Tile & Ceramics Career with Georg Jensen Inc. and Ossip Zadkine in 1940s Manhattan|publisher=Friesen Press|year=2022|isbn=9781039130869}} and created several portraits of her.{{Cite web|url=http://philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/334106.html?mulR=935772124%7C2|title=Philadelphia Museum of Art - Collections Object : Carol Janeway with Zadkine Sculpture|last=Art|first=Philadelphia Museum of|website=philamuseum.org|access-date=13 April 2017}}

The artist's only child, Nicolas Hasle (born 1960), was born after an affair with a Danish woman, Annelise Hasle.{{Cite web|date=31 March 2011|title=Paris Must Justify Right To Sculptor Ossip Zadkine's Estate|url=https://www.artforum.com/news/paris-must-justify-right-to-sculptor-ossip-zadkine-s-estate-27892|access-date=12 June 2020|website=Artforum.com|language=en-US}} Since 2009, Hasle, a psychiatrist, who had been acknowledged by the artist and had his parentage legally established in France in the 1980s, has been party to a lawsuit with the City of Paris to establish his claim to his father's estate.{{cite web|title=The Art Newspaper|url=http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Paris-must-justify-its-right-to-Zadkine-s-estate/23413|work=theartnewspaper.com}}{{Cite web|date=3 April 2011|title=Ossip Zadkine: Who Owns the Sculptor's Estate?|url=https://itsartlaw.org/2011/04/03/ossip-zadkine-who-owns-the-sculptors-estate/|access-date=12 June 2020|website=Center for Art Law|language=en-US}}

• 1950 Venice Biennale sculpture prize{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=2qUtAAAAIBAJ&pg=3342,6154520&dq=ossip-zadkine&hl=en|title=Ossip Zadkine – Obituary|date=27 November 1967|newspaper=The Montreal Gazette|access-date=20 April 2010}}
• 1961 Grand Prix National des Arts

• A school in Rotterdam was named after Zadkine.[https://www.zadkine.nl/ Zadkine college]

File:Ossip Zadkine, 1913, Maternité, painted elmwood, 81 cm, exhibited Salon des Independants, Paris, 1914 Published in Montjolie, 1914.jpg|Maternité, 1913, painted elmwood, 81 cm, exhibited at the 1914 Salon des Indépendants, Paris, Published in Montjoie, 1914

File:Ossip Zadkine, 1918, Femme au violon (Woman with a Violin).jpg|Femme au violon (Woman with a Violin), 1918 photograph by Pierre Choumoff

File:Ossip Zadkine, 1920, Venus.jpg|Venus, 1920, published in Action: Cahiers individualistes de philosophie et d'art, Volume 1, Number 4, July 1920

File:Musée Zadkine - Entrée de l'atelier.jpg|Prometheus, c. 1930–1940, wooden sculpture

File:Ossip Zadkine Skulptur - Die Gefangenen (2).jpg|The prisoners (Die Gefangenen), 1943, bronze sculpture

File:Rotterdam zadkine monument.jpg|The Destroyed City (De Verwoeste Stad), 1951–53, bronze sculpture in Rotterdam, which is now a registered monument.[https://monumentenregister.cultureelerfgoed.nl/monumenten/530902 Rijksmonumenten]

File:Ossip Zadkine-Grosser Orpheus.jpg|Orpheus, 1956, bronze sculpture

File:'Lotophage', bronze sculpture by Ossip Zadkine, 1961-1962, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel.jpg|Lotophage, 1961–62, bronze sculpture, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv

File:P1040677Beeld Vincent en Theo van Gogh.JPG|Vincent and Theo van Gogh, 1963–64, bronze sculpture, in Zundert, The Netherlands

File:Belgique - Bruxelles - Maison Blomme - 07.jpg|Bas-relief of the Blomme House in Brussels representing the architect's instruments

Among the public collections holding works by Ossip Zadkine are:

• Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles
• Musée Zadkine, Paris
• Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands
• Museum of Modern Art, New York City
• National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
• Tate Gallery, London
• Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel
• Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands

• Musée Zadkine
• Rue Zadkine

{{reflist}}

• Czwiklitzer, Christophe, Ossip Zadkine, le sculpteur-graveure de 1919 à 1967, Paris, Chez l'auteur, 1967.
• Yamanashi Kenritsu Bijutsukan, Ossip Zadkine, Tokyo, Yomiuri Shinbunsha, 1989.
• [http://www.art-in-society.de/AS10/Z/Zadkine1.html Andreas Weiland, "(Re-)Discovering Zadkine", in: Art in Society, issue # 10]

{{Commons category}}

{{Wikiquote}}

• [https://www.zadkine.com/ Zadkine Research Center]
• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Ossip Zadkine}}
• [http://www.paris.fr/portail/Culture/Portal.lut?page_id=6471 Zadkine Museum in Paris]
• [http://www.lesarques.fr/museacutee-zadkine.html Zadkine Museum in Les Arques]
• {{FrenchSculptureCensus}}

{{Authority control (arts)}}

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Category:1888 births

Category:1967 deaths

Category:20th-century Russian sculptors

Category:20th-century Russian male artists

Category:Russian male sculptors

Category:Modern sculptors

Category:Jewish Russian sculptors

Category:Jewish French sculptors

Category:French people of Russian-Jewish descent

Category:People from the Russian Empire of Scottish descent

Category:French people of Scottish descent

Category:Alumni of Chelsea College of Arts

Category:Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery

Category:School of Paris

Category:Emigrants from the Russian Empire to France

Category:20th-century French sculptors

Category:French male sculptors