Lipchitz was highly respected by great architects, both in France (Pierre Chareau, Le Corbusier and Robert Mallet-Stephens), and in the United States. The work with Philip Johnson for the Roofless Church in New Harmony, Indiana, for which he created the sculpture Between Heaven and Earth and the entrance doors, is exemplary of this.
The sculpture represents a tangle of human beings opening themselves up, supporting a sort of structure in the shape of an inverted heart, in which a faceless figure appears, supported by or hanging from the beak of a dove. From the tangled human masses, an ascending movement is created: some consider it an abstract composition which speaks of the passage from the material to the spiritual, others see it as a Christian theme with angels, the Virgin and the Holy Spirit. These are recurring themes in Lipchitz’s thematic, which mixes Jewish themes with Christian themes and with Greek mythology, and reinterprets them in a plastic symphony.
This work was initially conceived for the church of Notre Dame de Liesse in France (1948-1955), then for the abbey of Saint Columba in Iona in Great Britain (1959), and in a last design with thetitle Between Heaven and Earth for the Roofless Church itself (1966), for which Lipchitz also created the entrance doors, imagining a temple open to all types of spirituality. In the multicultural, multiethnic and multireligious world, diversity must be a stimulus for continuing to always further deepen awareness, be it scientific or artistic: this is Lipchitz’s message.
The sculpture’s inscription in English says:
“Jacob Lipchitz, Jew, faithful to the religion of his ancestors, has made this Virgin for the better understanding of human beings on this earth so that the Spirit may prevail.”
It is such an important work for Lipchitz that other, bigger versions were made for the library in Hastings on Hudson (1967), for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City (1968), for the entrance to the Music Center of Los Angeles (1969) and for the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art (Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea)in Rome (1971).
