In the plaster models, it is easy to see the essential sensuality of Lipchitz’s hands (and technique), his silent music and his universe of forms. “The terracottas and the plaster models are the basis of my inspiration, my only true original work and the most precious property I own”, wrote the great artist in the last years of his life. His method of work was primarily modelling using clay and plaster – his hands were his tools. His visual thought (to use Paul Klee’s concept) was formed with his hands in the material: Thinking Hands (this was what Alfred Wemer entitled his 1959 essay on Lipchitz in the magazine Midstream). His hands transferred his sculptural and vital ideas into these plaster models.
Lipchitz explained it clearly in the preface written for his New York exhibition 157 Small Bronze Sketches 1914-1967:
“It is a tradition in France that sculptors start their statues with a series of maquettes (clay sketch, model or dummy) or bozzettos, as Italians have called them. … It is in this way we have maintained the tradition of the maquette until today… The sketches are the first splash, the prime of inspiration which keeps all the spontaneous warmth… Throughout my life I have tried to preserve in these clay maquettes the ideas that have come to me spontaneously”.
Most of Lipchitz’s sculptures were modelled in plaster or clay to then be fused in bronze, and in some cases in lead. During his Cubist period, Lipchitz also used wood. In some cases, especially during the last years of life in Italy, he sculpted directly on stone, granite or marble.
