Galerie Claude Lemand

PORTRAITS OF THE-NON-EXISTENT-BIRD - OSSIP ZADKINE

The Birds of Ossip Zadkine.
Claude Lemand.

The bird theme did not inspire Ossip Zadkine, nei­ther in his sculp­tures nor in his paint­ings and engrav­ings. Representing the human body of both men and women is the core of his artistic uni­verse and it is his only con­cern. However, he pro­duced a plaster sculp­ture enti­tled The Golden Bird in South of France in 1926. The sun was his source of inspi­ra­tion for his colors, red and gold, « the gold leaves create an effect of majestic feathers ».

Claude Aveline met Zadkine at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, during the artist’s first solo ret­ro­spec­tive in 1949 that Jean Cassou orga­nized for him. Cassou was a poet, writer, member of the resis­tance, gen­eral director of the National Museum of Modern Art of Paris since 1945 as well as being Claude Aveline’s child­hood friend and the latter’s resis­tance com­panion at the Musée de l’Homme. The fol­lowing year in 1950, Zadkine was awarded the great sculp­ture prize at the Venice Biennial, whilst the prize for painting was awarded to Matisse.

Aveline became a close friend of Zadkine, who drew for him a Portrait of The-Non-Existent-Bird in 1957 (Gift of Claude Aveline, MNAM, Centre Georges Pompidou), a large drawing on paper of a man-bird exe­cuted in his sig­na­ture expres­sion­istic style. In 1964, Aveline’s poem stim­u­lated the artist’s imag­i­na­tion and appar­ently revived his Russian cul­tural roots. Zadkine drew 18 colour Portraits of The-Non-Existent-Bird, which were then repro­duced in lithographs by Mourlot in Paris: expres­sion­istic or baroque man-birds, fan­tasy and lyrical chimera-like birds. The author and the artist exhib­ited this book in Paris and pro­moted it together. An inter­view recorded from the radio can be found in the col­lec­tions of the INA (Institut National de l’Audiovisuel), in which Claude Aveline and Ossip Zakine realise that their par­ents come from the same vil­lage in Russia!

The bird is the last theme that inspired Zadkine just like Claude Aveline’s bust was his last sculp­ture. The day after Zadkine passed away, Claude Aveline pub­lished an article in Le Figaro, a tribute to the great sculptor’s genius and a detailed account of Zadkine’s tech­nique used to realise his bust, the last piece com­pleted before the artist’s death.