Artist

Alexander Archipenko

born Kiev, Russia (now Kyiv, Ukraine) 1887-died New York City 1964
Media - portrait_image_113200.jpg - 89882
Courtesy Alexander Archipenko papers, 1904-1986. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Also known as
  • Aleksandr Porfirevic Archipenko
Born
Kiev, Russia
Died
New York, New York, United States
Active in
  • Woodstock, New York, United States
Nationalities
  • American
Biography

Alexander Archipenko was a sculptor who was born in the Ukraine. After working in Paris, Archipenko moved to the U.S. and became a citizen in 1928. An important influence on sculpture in this country and abroad, Archipenko experimented with simplified forms, spaces enclosed within the sculpture, concave shapes as counterpoints to convex and concave planes, and polychromy. He taught at several universities and had his own sculpture schools in Chicago and New York.

National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996)

Luce Artist Biography

Alexander Archipenko grew up in Kiev, Russia, where he studied painting and sculpture at the KievArtSchool. In 1908 he moved to Paris and exhibited with a group of avant-garde artists that included Marcel Duchamp and Fernand Léger. Archipenko created some of the earliest multimedia sculptures, working with glass, wire, and wood, and was one of the first modern artists to add color to sculpted form. In 1923, Archipenko moved to the United States, where he opened art schools in New York City and Woodstock and taught in universities across the country.