Ossip Zadkine

Ossip Zadkine (Осип Цадкин; 28 January 1888 – 25 November 1967) was a Russian-French artist of the School of Paris. He is best known as a sculptor, but also produced paintings and lithographs.

Early years and education
Zadkine was born on 28 January 1888 as Yossel Aronovich Tsadkin (Иосель Аронович Цадкин) in the city of Vitsebsk, Russian Empire (now Belarus). He was born to a baptized Jewish father and a mother named Zippa-Dvoyra, who he claimed to be of Scottish origin. Archival materials state that Iosel-Shmuila Aronovich Tsadkin was of Jewish faith and studied in the Vitebsk City Technical School between 1900 and 1904. He also studied in the Yury Pen's art school with would-be artists Marc Chagall (then Movsha Shagal) and Victor Mekler (then Avigdor Mekler). Archival materials contradict Zadkine himself and states that his father did not convert to the Russian Orthodox religion and his mother was not of a Scottish extraction. He had 5 siblings: sisters Mira, Roza and Fania and brothers Mark and Moses.

At the age of fifteen, Zadkine was sent by his father to Sunderland to learn English and "good manners". He then moved to London and attended lessons at the Regent Street Polytechnic where he considered the teachers to be too conservative.

Zadkine settled in Paris in 1910. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts for six months. In 1911 he lived and worked in La Ruche. While in Paris he joined the Cubist movement, working in a Cubist idiom from 1914 to 1925. He later developed his own style, one that was strongly influenced by African and Greek art.

Career
In 1921 he obtained French citizenship. Zadkine served as a stretcher-bearer in the French Army during World War I, and was wounded in action. He spent World War II in the US. His best-known work is probably the sculpture The Destroyed City (1951–1953), representing a man without a heart, a memorial to the destruction of the center of the Dutch city of Rotterdam in 1940 by the Nazi-German Luftwaffe.

He taught sculpture classes at Académie de la Grande Chaumière until 1958, students of his included artists Geula Dagan (1925–2008), Gunnar Aagaard Andersen and Genevieve Pezet.

Death and legacy
Zadkine died in Paris in 1967 at the age of 79 after undergoing abdominal surgery and was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse.

Museums
His former home and studio in Montparnasse is now the Musée Zadkine. When his former wife Prax died, she donated the house and art studio to the City of Paris for the formation of Musée Zadkine.

There is also a Musée Zadkine in the village of Les Arques in the Midi-Pyrénées region of France. Zadkine lived in Les Arques for a number of years, and while there, carved an enormous Christ on the Cross and Pieta that are featured in the 12th-century church which stands opposite the museum.

Personal life
In August 1920, Zadkine married Valentine Prax (1897–1981), an Algerian-born painter of Sicilian and French-Catalan descent. Prax and Zadkine had no children.

Zadkine was a neighbor in Montparnasse and a friend of Henry Miller and was represented by the character "Borowski" in Miller's novel, Tropic of Cancer (1934). His other neighbors there included Chaïm Soutine, and Tsuguharu Foujita.

While living in Manhattan during wartime from 1942 to 1945, Zadkine had a relationship with American artist Carol Janeway and created several portraits of her.

The artist's only child, Nicolas Hasle (born 1960), was born after an affair with a Danish woman, Annelise Hasle. Since 2009, Hasle, a psychiatrist, who had been acknowledged by the artist and had his parentage legally established in France in the 1980s, has been party to a lawsuit with the City of Paris to establish his claim to his father's estate.

Awards

 * 1950 Venice Biennale sculpture prize
 * 1961 Grand Prix National des Arts

Legacy

 * A school in Rotterdam was named after Zadkine.

Public collections
Among the public collections holding works by Ossip Zadkine are:
 * Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles
 * Musée Zadkine, Paris
 * Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands
 * Museum of Modern Art, New York City
 * National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
 * Tate Gallery, London
 * Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel
 * Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands