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In 1918, almost at the end of World War I, I left my Paris studio to work in the country. I went to Beaulieu pres Loches and immediately I encountered great problems. It was absolutely impossible to continue the same work I had been doing in Paris because of material difficulties.
So I decided to carve a few bas-reliefs directly in stone. At that time I was preoccupied with the idea of polychromed sculpture--which means for me not just to colour a carved surface but to conceive a sculptured form in colour from the beginning. I found two plaques of stone and made two bas-reliefs, one multicoloured and the other one in different shades of one colour to white. I made before preliminary studies in gouache and somehow liked them. And since I had to bring my production once a month to my Paris dealer and realized that it was no easy task to travel during the war with a stone, I decided to make only studies in casein or gouache to be carved later after the return to my studio.
As it happened, this plan to carve them later never materialized because I became interested in other work.
Hare you see a few of these studies made in Beaulieu and also some earlier studies for sculpture. Only the number was made after I carved the bas-relief in stone to find out how to enrich some forms with colour. I add to this little exhibit two polychromed stones to shed some light on the significance of these studies. One of the two stones was made in Beaulieu and the other one later in 1921 in Paris in the same spirit. 
Jacques Lipchitz
Hastings-on-Hudson
September, 1955