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14

further explorations into free organic organization. Meditation is a development of the Thinker theme with the figure seated, one arm across his legs and the other arm supporting his head. This is different from the earlier version entitled Man Leaning on His Elbows in that the forms are now massively modelled but in an organic rather than in a geometric sense. There is a strong statement of the body structure of the figure, of massive arms and legs arranged in curving forms which suggest for the first time some of the monumental organic sculptures of the latter 1930's and early 1940's. Standing Figure (27) is once more a startling new development, more freely handled than almost any work by Lipchitz up to this point. In this maquette the clay is pulled and twisted in a quite literally baroque manner. A sense of movement, of floating draperies, is apparent. Here begins a new vein of exploration which is to be pursued in the sketches of the next few years and in many of the major sculptures of the 1940's and 1950's.

1928

Most of Lipchitz' sculpture form the time he turned to cubism up to this point had been organized within the invisible block of cubist forms. Space frequently interpenetrated this block but there was rarely much emphasis placed on the statement of the external spatial existence of the block, the movement within surrounding space