Lippy Lipshitz

Israel-Isaac Lipshitz, known as Lippy Lipshitz (8 May 1903 – 17 May 1980) was a South African sculptor, painter and printmaker.

He is considered to be one of the most important South African sculptors, along with Moses Kottler and Anton van Wouw.

Israel-Isaac Lipshitz was born on 8 May 1903 as the second son of Shlomeh Josef Lipshitz of Dvinsk and Chayah Meray Faktor of Plungė, Lithuania.

His paternal grandparents were of the Jewish Chassidic sect, while his maternal grandparents were of the Misnaged sect in February 1904, Israel's father set out for Cape Town in search of better prospects than were available to him in Plungė.

He left his wife and the infant with the paternal grandfather Yankeh Fivah Faktor for the next four-and-a-half years.

In his care the young Israel was taught to draw, carve wood and model in dough and candle grease.

His grandfather had built the synagogue in Plungian, and it was in the decorative art of the synagogue that Israel first felt the impetus to artistic expression.

In 1908, Israel and his mother travelled to the port of Bremen, from where they arrived in Cape Town on 30 April 1908.

In 1909, Israel started attending kindergarten classes at the Constitution Street Public School, where he received drawing instruction by the painter Ruth Prowse, and from 1911 to 1914 attended the Public Schools in Constitution and De Villiers Streets.

From 1915 to 1917 he studied at Hope Mill School and matriculated in 1920 from the Normal College in Buitenkant Street.

Through Kottler, who had studied at the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem and in Germany, before settling in Cape Town in 1915, Lipshitz made contact with modern art.

He also received an introduction to West African sculpture from Meyerowitz, who lent him a copy of Carl Einstein's Negerplastik (1915), an art-historical piece on primitivism.

After school he pursued and abandoned a briefly held ambition to become a writer and enrolled, in April 1922, at the Cape Town Art School in Stal Plein.

The Cape Town Art School was run by Mr. P. Thatcher and Mr. C. S. Groves, who imposed a tradition of British academic discipline.

Lipshitz developed friendships with painter Russel Harvey and sculptor Moses Kottler.

In 1925 Lipshitz met the Russian Jewish sculptor Herbert Vladimir Meyerowitz, who arrived from Berlin and was appointed lecturer at Michaelis School of Fine Art.

They became friends and Meyerowitz invited him to be his assistant as Michaelis.

Lipshitz derived considerable benefit from this relationship as he learned from Meyerowitz's skill in woodcarving.

At the end of 1926 a disagreement led to a parting of ways between Meyerowitz and Lipshitz.

Isaac took up a studio with Russel Harvey in the Wasserfall and Hardick building in Church Street among painters George Crosland Robinson and Constance Penstone and sculptor Thackeray Edwards.

Towards the end of 1928, Lipshitz decided to further his education in Paris.

He married Rachil Sief on 8 May 1928 and soon after made his departure for the City of Lights thanks to a grant from Ernest Oppenheimer.

Lipshitz took up residence in Montparnasse, Paris.

He enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière where he studied under Antoine Bourdelle, onetime assistant to Rodin.

In Paris he was initiated in the Modern Movement.

Here he came into contact with the concepts of Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism and Constructivism.

In May 1929, with Rachel Lipshitz pregnant with their first child, he was forced to turn professional sculptor and abandon the Académie.

He rented a studio in the rue Bardinet and some work was soon accepted for the Salon d'Automne of 1929, marking the beginning of his professional career.

Also in 1929 he was able to visit first the studio of Ossip Zadkine, then Constantin Brâncuși.

His friend Nesto Jacometti also introduced him to the work of a circle of Jewish artists within the École de Paris who would influence Lipshitz greatly: Chaïm Soutine, Jules Pascin, Moise Kisling and Amedeo Modigliani.

When Rachil Lipshitz returned to Cape Town in February 1930, Isaac remained in Paris for another two years, producing the body of work eventually shown at his first one-man exhibition in Cape Town in 1932.

During these last two years he lived the life of a Bohemian, frequenting the Café de la Rotonde and the Dôme and gate crashing the annual Beaux Arts Ball.

It was during this time he took up the soubriquet Lippy to distinguish himself from Cubist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz.

He returned to Cape Town in March 1932, settling in Barnett Street near the Company's Garden.

He installed his studio in Castle Street, with painter Christopher Williams and set about organising his first solo exhibition of sculptures and drawings, which was to take place at the Martin Melck House on 16 May 1932.

He found vociferous opposition to the Modern Movement and critics, like Bernard Lewis writing for The Cape, dismissive of all that it produced.

Lippy's exhibitions at Asbey's Galleries in 1934 and 1937 was subjected to a renewed assault by Lewis, but defended by younger critics, such as German sculptor René Graetz.

Other artists such as Maggie Laubser, who had returned from Berlin strongly influenced by the German Expressionism, was similarly assaulted.

That young artists felt compelled to defend Lippy's work was a first sign that they were organising themselves in opposition to establishment figures like Edward Roworth, then president of the South African Society of Arts.

In 1936, the painter Gregoire Boonzaier returned from studies in London and felt compelled to take this further.