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March 29th until May 27th 2010 in Chevilly-Larue (Region Paris)

More than twenty years after his death, Chevilly-Larue recalls its honoured citizen Morice Lipsi. From March 29th until May 27th 2010, the city of Chevilly-Larue (Region Paris), where Lipsi from 1930 until 1987 lived and worked, will be presenting a Lipsi Retrospective. The main lender is the Museum Morice Lipsi in Rosey. Additionally, the Musée d?Art Contemporain Val de Marne (VALMAC), a sister museum of the Centre Pompidou, and private collections contributed pieces. Over 30 sculptures are displayed at two locations, namely in the garden of the Maison du Conte (the former Villa Lipsi), and in the culture centre Rosa Bonheur. In the underpass connecting the two locations, a photography exhibition shows images of all of Morice Lipsi?s public works in France, Italy, Japan, Germany, Israel, Iceland, and Slovakia. The route also leads past a new addition to the city of Chevilly-Larue, which has been inaugurated on a roundabout in the main street (Rondpoint Général de Gaulle). Regular tours and workshops for adults and children, lectures, and debates will be held here over two months.

Morice Lipius, born 1898 in Lodz (Poland), learned the art of sculpture in ?La Ruche? Montparnasse in Paris starting in 1912 under the tutelage of his elder brother, the ivory carver Samuel Lipschytz (born 1880 in Pabianice, died 1943 in Auschwitz). From age 14 until his death at over 80 years of age, Lipsi dedicated his life to sculpture, primarily direct stoneworking. From wood and marble to limestone, lava and granite he cut his own path with hammer and chisel, spontaneously, uninfluenced by his many artist friends such as Zadkine, Soutine, Modigliani, Archipenko, Laurens, Arp, and Sonja Delaunay, but always filled with the spirit of his era.

After his marriage to the Swiss painter Hildegard Weber, the young pair moved to Chevilly-Larue in the south of Paris in 1930. Barns became studios, in which Lipsi worked for over 50 years and developed a path towards abstraction, directed at light and the monumental. As founder of the Sculpture Symposium in Grenoble in 1963, and active in the movement connecting architecture and sculpture along with the sociologist Paul Virilio and the architect Claude Parent, Morice Lipsi achieved increasing international attention.

He bequeathed a considerable body of work to numerous private and public collections, including even monumental pieces internationally resulting from public commissions.

Lipsi?s youngest daughter, Gabrielle Beck-Lipsi, maintains his estate in the Museum Morice Lipsi in Rosey (Haute Saône).

www.musee-lipsi.com,
www.ville-chevilly-larue.fr