Born in Kiev on May 30 (June 11), 1887 in the family of a professor of mechanics. In 1902 he entered the Kiev Art College, left him, not satisfied with the teaching system. Having left for Paris (1908), he settled in the colony of artists “La Ruche” (“The Hive”), where he met A. Modigliani and A. Godier-Brzesko; He was greatly influenced by sculptures of the Ancient World (Egypt, Assyria, etc.), and later Gothic.
His enthusiasm for archaic was reflected in his figures of the late 1900s - early 1910s (Seated mother, bronze, 1911, City Museum, Duisburg, Germany). In the 1910s, he developed the principles of three-dimensional cubism based on geometric simplification and dynamic contrasts of forms (Boxers, terracotta, 1913, Peggy Guggenheim Museum, Venice). As a result, he came up with pointless art (compositions by Medrano, 1910s), experimenting with different materials.
1887, Kiev - 1964, New York
The works of A.P. Arkhipenko turned world views around the beginning of the 20th century. about sculpture, they untied their hands and freed the eyes of many painters-sculptors. It was Arkhipenko who for the first time “composed” a single form from various nonequivalent forms, introducing glass, wood, metal, celluloid into the composition. Plasticity, movement, revealed construction and constructiveness, lyricism are the main qualities of his work, highly appreciated by contemporaries - G. Apollinaire, P. Picasso, F. Leger, M. Duchamp, R. and S. Delaunay, A. Rodchenko, P. Kovzhun , followers and researchers.
Arkhipenko was born in the family of professor of Kiev University, engineer-inventor P. A. Arkhipenko. His grandfather was an icon painter. The future sculptor from childhood had a love of art and mathematics, invention, design. He began painting classes, according to his own recollections, in 1900-01. from copying from Michelangelo’s book of drawings. In 1902-05 studied at the Kiev art school, from where he was expelled for criticisms of teachers who taught according to the old system. He continued his education in private studios in Moscow. In 1908, Arkhipenko settled in Paris, where he studied for a short time at the School of Arts, then studied in museums with A. Modigliani an ancient sculpture of Egypt, Assyria, Central America, and Africa.
In 1908-11 created bronze sculptures "Adam and Eve", "Woman with a Cat", "Salome", "Susanna", "Sitting Nude". He focused on the plastic of the whole, streamlined shape and texture of the surface. He also worked in ceramics. In 1910, he opened a workshop in Montparnasse, participated in exhibitions in The Hague and Berlin, worked together with a group of artists and cubist sculptors. In 1912 he created a series of figures "Circus Medrano", built using elementary geometric shapes. In the same year, limiting ties with Cubism, finding in it more formal than creative, Arkhipenko founded his own school in Paris; made a long trip with an exhibition of his works in Italy, Sweden, Germany, the Czech Republic.
During the First World War, Arkhipenko lived in a suburb of Nice, worked in the field of "sculpture-painting", combining three-dimensional and planar ("Hispaniola", 1916;
"Still life with a book and a vase on the table", 1918), performed figures with through holes, for the first time in world sculpture practice using the space "inside" and "void" as a figurative element equal to the material. He created elongated semi-abstract metal and stone torsos, vase-like sculptures: “Woman laying her hair” (1915), “Ray” (1918), “Vase-woman” (1919), etc.
In 1921, having married German A. Bruno-Schmitz, Arkhipenko settled in Berlin and opened an art school there. The exhibition of works by Arkhipenko, held that same year at the New York Museum of Modern Art, was a resounding success. Monographs about the artist appeared in many European languages, including Russian.
Soon, in 1923, the sculptor moved to the USA, in 1928 he accepted American citizenship. In the 1920s and 30s created a number of realistic works ("Turned Torso", "Diana", "Walking", "Desire", "Melancholy", etc.), as well as academically traditional sculptural portraits of T. G. Shevchenko, I. Ya. Franko, American figures politics and culture. He continued to work in line with the abstract, constructive sculpture, using various technical inventions; in particular, he developed the so-called archipenture - moving painting (1924-27), where, with the help of a complex mechanism, narrow colored stripes were set in motion, creating certain compositions that changed images at the whim of the artist. He experimented with "sound sculpture", and also made translucent, illuminated from inside shapes-objects (1940s).
In America, the work of Arkhipenko was of constant interest; over forty years more than 150 solo exhibitions have been organized. The artist taught at his studios in Woodstock (1924-28, 1940s), Los Angeles (1935), Chicago (late 1930s), at the University of Washington in Seattle (1935-36, 1952), New Bauhaus (1937 ), at the Drawing Institute in Chicago (1946), University of Kansas City (1950); traveled with lectures in US cities.
After the death of the master, a retrospective exhibition of his works was shown in many cities in the United States.
