Centaure

A Russian-born artist who later obtained French citizenship, Ossip Zadkine drew upon the expressiveness of Auguste Rodin and the Cubist idiom of Pablo Picasso to create this thoroughly modern interpretation of a classical subject. Exploring the convexities and concavities of a three-dimensional form, Zadkine accentuates light and shadow while simultaneously skewing the viewer’s perspective. As the Nazi regime encroached on France during World War II, Zadkine fled to the United States, where he taught sculpture at Black Mountain College’s 1945 summer institute. He returned to France that same year and eventually established his own art school in Paris. The eponymous studio attracted numerous American pupils, including fellow BMC alumnus Kenneth Noland.