Ossip Zadkine

(Belarusian/French, 1890–1967)

Ossip Zadkine was a French-Russian artist known for his figurative-Cubist sculptures. His works feature aesthetic qualities inspired by ancient African and Mediterranean art. “Whatever the apparent aim of the artist, he is called upon first to move the spectator,” he said. “His predilections, his preferences, crystallize afterwards in the choice of means to interpret those natural objects; these means are always, obligingly, of imaginary essence.” Born on July 4, 1890 in Vitsebsk, Belarus, the artist emigrated to Paris at the age of 20. While studying at the École des Beaux-Arts he discovered the work of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Turning towards politically-motivated subjects following his service in the French military during World War I. Zadkine’s late sculpture The Destroyed City (1953), conveys the horrible destruction of Rotterdam by Nazi bombers. The artist had achieved considerable acclaim by his death on November 25, 1967 in Paris, France. Today, his works are in the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Tate Gallery in London, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.