Cubist interlude and first success

1921-1925 A Cubist Interlude and a First Dedication

In February 1921 Zadkine exhibited at the galerie La Licorne which Dr Girardin had just opened. This same year, he took French nationality and saw his Tigre en bois doré (Tiger in Gilded Wood) and a Head of a Young Girl in marble exhibited at the Musée de Grenoble on the instigation of the curator Andry-Farcy.  Research, trial and error and incursions towards “other” forms: in the sculptures produced in 1921 and 1924, Zadkine cut out planes in a more defined fashion, sharpened edges, and submitted the mass to a geometrical rigour. The Woman with a Fan which he exhibited at the Salon d’automne in 1923 and the Accordion Player series are the clearest representatives of the "small, rigid and angular Cubist world" which the sculptor would soon outgrow and return to his own style.

 

In 1925 the Galerie Barbazanges, one of the first in Paris, devoted a large exhibition to him. The critic Waldemar-George reported the "Barbarous and primitive idols” of Ossip Zadkine – "This Slav who revives myths is a poet who dispenses emotion of a mystical and religious order". (L’Amour de l’art)