Heroïc Head

• OSSIP ZADKINE
  Heroïc Head

• 29 x 27 x 28 cm
  Purchase by the City of Paris with funds from the Valentine Prax bequest, 1988
• [1908]
• Granite
• Inv. MZS 139
• Musée Zadkine
• Room 1

This work was produced in Russia, Zadkine’s country of origin. It is one of the rare examples of the work of Zadkine’s youth. Zadkine can hardly have been twenty years old when he carved this head, returning from a stay of almost two years in England during which he became familiar with wood sculpture. Zadkine undertook the execution of this unique work during a holiday spent in Vitebsk, in the property owned by a maternal uncle, shortly before his departure for Paris where legend has it that he arrived at the end of 1910. 

In his memoirs Zadkine refers to the origin of this work with its very unsophisticated style. "I remember this old piece of stone, this large piece of pink granite, swept along by the ice and abandoned in one of my uncle’s fields by an arctic glacier; before being able to trace one single line on it, I shamefully broke all my chisels brought from London. I asked the blacksmith to make me several chisels which would allow me to carve a sort of head in the granite". From the very outset this work prefigured the taste which was Zadkine’s throughout his life, for direct carving and his knowledge of materials and their artistic particularities.