Raymond Duchamp-Villon

Raymond Duchamp-Villon , 1876-1918, French sculptor; brother of the artists Marcel Duchamp and Jacques Villon. From the tradition of Rodin he turned to cubism in 1912. He began to assemble machinelike forms with more than a touch of fantasy. His famous geometrically faceted Horse is in the Musée national d'Art moderne, Paris, which contains other of his works. An enlarged cast of the Horse, made after the sculptor's death, is in the Museum of Modern Art, New York City.

Duchamp-Villon, Raymond (1876–1918). French sculptor, the brother of Marcel Duchamp and of Jacques Villon (he adopted the name Duchamp-Villon in about 1900). After illness forced him to abandon his medical studies at the University of Paris in 1898, he took up sculpture, at which he was self-taught. For the next dozen years or so he experimented with various styles until in about 1910 he became involved with Cubism. Several other Cubists used to meet in the studios of Duchamp-Villon and Villon and from these meetings the Section d'Or group emerged. In 1914 Duchamp-Villon enlisted in the army as an auxiliary doctor; he contracted typhoid fever in 1916 and spent his last two years as an invalid before he died in a military hospital. His death cut short a career of great promise, for his major work, The Horse (1914), has been described by George Heard Hamilton (Painting and Sculpture in Europe: 1880–1940, 1967) as ‘the most powerful piece of sculpture produced by any strictly Cubist artist’ (there are casts in Tate Modern, London; MoMA, New York; and elsewhere). This ‘abstract diagram of the muscular tensions developed by a leaping horse’ (Hamilton) has been compared with the work of the Futurists, particularly that of Boccioni, who met Duchamp-Villon in 1913. In the success with which it suggests taut energy it certainly achieves at least one of the things the Futurists were aiming at in their attempts to represent ‘the dynamics of movement’.

Duchamp-Villon, Raymond (1876–1918). French sculptor, born in Damville, near Rouen, the brother of Marcel and Suzanne Duchamp and of Jacques Villon (he adopted the name Duchamp-Villon in about 1900). After illness forced him to give up his medical studies at the University of Paris in 1898 he took up sculpture, at which he was self-taught. For the next dozen years or so he experimented with various styles until in about 1910 he became involved with Cubism. Several other Cubists used to meet in the studios of Duchamp-Villon and Villon (see PUTEAUX GROUP) and from these meetings the Section d'Or group emerged. In 1914 Duchamp-Villon enlisted in the army as an auxiliary doctor, and he contracted typhoid fever in 1916; he spent his last two years as an invalid before he died in a military hospital in Cannes. His death cut short a career of great promise, for his major work, The Horse (1914), has been described by George Heard Hamilton as ‘the most powerful piece of sculpture produced by any strictly Cubist artist’ (there are casts in the Tate Gallery, London, MOMA, New York, and elsewhere). This ‘abstract diagram of the muscular tensions developed by a leaping horse’ ( Hamilton) has been compared with the work of the Futurists, particularly that of Boccioni, who met Duchamp-Villon in 1913. In the success with which it suggests taut energy it certainly achieves at least one of the things the Futurists were aiming at in their attempts to represent ‘the dynamics of movement'.