The plaster models had great value for Lipchitz. This is demonstrated by the fact that they were kept and then, in accordance with his wishes, given to museums. The works given to Prato span all the creative periods of his artistic life: from the first representation upon his arrival in Paris, with the bassorilievo Scena Mitologica (1911), to the Cubist period which gave rise to the Arlecchino e mandolin (1920) or Strumenti di musica (1924), to the period of the transparents, the precursor to Henry Moore’s ‘empty’ sculptures, represented by Tête et Mains (1933), up to the exile works in the United States, Agar (1949) and the struggle of Bellerofonte con Pegaso (1964) (located in Columbia University, New York)), along with the portraits of the gallerists Albert Skira and Curt Valentin and the works created with architects.
The value that Lipchitz attributed to his plaster models is evident, for example, in the desire he held since his Paris years to be photographed in the studio surrounded by plaster models, or by the way in which he took a large number of photographs of just one plaster model. There are also numerous snapshots of the sculptor in his studio in Boulogne, near Paris, like later in the one in Hastings, again surrounded by plaster models. These photographs, which Lipchitz asked be published in his catalogues, clearly indicate the importance that the plasters had for him.
The plaster models present us not only with the ideas that shape the sculptor’s visual thought, but also that journey that starts with the initial model and ends with the complete, finished work, as well as problems relating to scale. These changes in size bring us closer to the way in which the artist sees the work positioned in a public place: modelage à grandeur, or the natural size that the artist conceived for the work.
