Bathers

Alexander Archipenko

Though normally printed in a red ink, Sylvan Cole, who published 'Bathers' at Associated American Artists (AAA) said Archipenko, working with New York Master Printer George Miller experimented with a number of color proofs, in varying colors, before settling on the brick red for the edition. This is one of those color trial proofs.

Though done in 1950 the print was not sold until 1954. An edition of 250 was originally planned but fewer than 100 were printed.

Alexander Archipenko, sculptor and printmaker, was born on 30 May 1887 in Kiev, Ukrania. He studied at the Kiev Art School from 1902 to 1905, when he was expelled for criticizing the academic attitudes of his teachers. In 1906 he moved to Moscow and, in 1908, to Paris where he ended his studies the Ecole des Beaux-Arts after two weeks, again showing his impatience of discipline. Instead, he studied ancient and medieval sculpture in the Musée du Louvre, and some of the work of his early years in Paris (mainly female figures) is in a primitivistic manner recalling Egyptian art.

Archipenko lived in Berlin where he ran an art school between 1921 and 1923. He immigrated to the United States in 1923 and became a United States citizen in 1928. He lived, worked, and taught in various places, but chiefly in New York, where he directed his own school of sculpture from 1939 until his death. In 1924, he created his first kinetic work Archipentura.

Most of Archipenko's work in German museums was termed degenerate and confiscated by the Nazis. After the Second World War he experimented with 'light' sculptures, making structures of plastic lit from within. He toured with an exhibition of his work throughout Germany between 1955 and 1956. Alexander Archipenko died on 25 February 1964 in New York.