Zadkine, Ossip

Zadkine, Ossip (1890–1967). Russian-born sculptor who worked mainly in Paris and became a French citizen in 1921. He moved to Paris in 1909 after spending four years in Britain (sent there by his father—a professor of classics—to learn ‘English and good manners’). By 1912 he was friendly with many leading figures in avant-garde art, among them Apollinaire, Archipenko, Brancusi, Lipchitz, and Picasso. He deeply admired Rodin, but Cubism had a greater impact on his work. His experiments with Cubism, however, had none of the quality of intellectual rigour and restraint associated with Picasso and Braque, for Zadkine's primary concern was with dramatically expressive forms. The distinctive style he evolved made great use of hollows and concave inflections, his figures often having openings pierced through them. In 1915 he joined the French army but was invalided out after being gassed. He worked in Paris through the 1920s and 1930s, and spent the Second World War in New York (where he taught at the Art Students League), returning to Paris in 1944. Often Zadkine's work can seem merely melodramatic, but for his greatest commission—the huge bronze To a Destroyed City (completed 1953) standing at the entry to the port of Rotterdam—he created an extremely powerful figure that is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of 20th-century sculpture. With its jagged, torn shapes forming an impassioned gesture mixing defence and supplication, it vividly proclaims anger and frustration at the city's destruction and the courage that made possible its rebuilding. This work gave Zadkine an international reputation and many other major commissions followed it. The house in which he lived in Paris is now a museum dedicated to his work.