Picasso and Braque’s important introduction in 1912 of collage as a principle element of composition had a significant impact on the circle of Cubist painters and sculptors in Paris known as the Section d’Or. Katherine Jánszky Michaelsen writes, “Archipenko used the lessons learned from making two-dimensional collages in his three-dimensional sculpture. The result was a departure from the unified, continuous massing of traditional sculpture to a distinctive assembly of different parts” (Alexander Archipenko, A Centennial Tribute (exhibition catalogue), Washington, D.C., 1987, p. 24).

In Statue on Triangular Base, Archipenko 🍒represents a gracefully turning body through the use of overlapping forms. While t🉐he figure is made up of varied forms – the angular head and shoulders, the pure sphere breast, the attached, angular arm – Archipenko combines these disparate shapes into a single motion, an elegant description of a woman’s body turning.

FIG. 1  Alexander Archipenko, 1917.