The Gray period ravaged Archipenko’s art so that such a junk torso could 

appear on the art market.Mediocrity also destroys the work of the greatest mind.

Hill Auction Gallery

February 26, 2020

Sunrise FL US

 

 

 A typical example of the Archipenko statues' fakes.In the Chrities Auction 2020/19633 .

Woman Combing her Hair

The is the originer signature from Horseman.

Archipenko Horseman

Forming and shaping a horse is the greatest challenge for an artist. As Raymond Duchamp Villon was able to represent the strength and workability of the horse as the engine of the industrial and war machine, Archipenko captured the thousand-year-long intellectual, spiritual and physical partnership between the horse and the man in a glorious arch. The spirituality of Archipenko was able to capture and represent that was desired by the art for thousands of years. By representing the coexistence of spirit and form so brilliantly, Archipenko presented an irreproducible gift to the world, that is unique in the history of the art of sculpture.

The artistic work of Archipenko can be divided into three periods.

During his European era in the 1910s-’20s he stood out as a genius of his time with his new views, shapes and ideas. The Horseman is an intellectual masterpiece of this era.

His second period began with his emigration to the United States and lasted until his death in 1964. During these years his work can be characterized by being spent and barren, he mostly worked on the recreation of pieces from his European period that had disappeared or had been destroyed.

His new pieces of art, like The Queen of Sheba and the King Solomon were just grey shades of his pristine brilliance.

It is often mentioned in professional lectures, that Archipenko is the Picasso of 20th century sculpture.

The main difference between these two geniuses, though, is that while Picasso was the creator of the spirit of the age himself, Archipenko was created by the spirit of the age. This fact is justified by his spent and less original work in America.

The third period of his work is often called the Grey era, when museums were flooded by Archipenko-copies, that created the foundation of a closed, vertical and horizontal business cartel-system, that ignores universal trademark protection and floods the artwork market with mould copies. The work of Archipenko is degraded to cheap mass-produced items by this mercantilism. 

But the Horseman counterbalances this as a rider of the Apocalypse.