Jacob Lipkin

Jacob Lipkin, was an American sculptor.

Jacob Lipkin, an American sculptor, was born April 19, 1909

in New York City's Lower East Side.

Lipkin carved in stone and wood with a humanist's sensibility,

often using "creatures and people from mythology to convey the harmonious connection between Man and Nature" (from a quote by Koren Der Harootian, in the Village Art Center Catalog, circa 1954).

Between 1937 and 1940, Lipkin studied art in Manhattan at the Educational alliance, The Cooper Union, Art Students League of New York and Leonardo da Vinci Art School.

By 1940, Lipkin devoted himself fully to sculpting. He worked and lived his last 40 years in the modest home, studio, and sculpture garden he had built himself in the Township of Babylon, N.Y.Lipkin's work was exhibited with artists including Chaim Gross, Louise Bourgeois, Louise Nevelson, and Isamu Noguchi in the 1940s to 1950s including at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Providence Art Club, New Jersey Society of Painters and showings at public museums including the Brooklyn Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In the 1950s Lipkin was an instructor at the North Shore Community College and associate professor at Silvermine College.

Lipkin received numerous awards, including the New Jersey Society of Painters and Sculptors Medal of Honor in 1958 and First Prize in 1964

and Silvermine Guild Award.

He also exhibited widely during the 1950s with a variety of artists. Over nearly four decades he participated in over 70 group exhibitions and had 21 one-man shows.

In 1968 Lipkin had a 30-year retrospective in Philadelphia at the grand lobby of the Provident National Bank where he exhibited 40 sculptures. Lipkin's Socrates, The Prophet, 1968, was originally installed by the Provident National Bank at JFK Plaza and now stands in Cret Park at Ben Franklin Parkway. This eight foot tall, 13,000-pound sculpture of Socrates stands in Philadelphia amongst other famous artists including Henry Moore, Jacob Epstein and Jacques Lipchitz.

Jacob Lipkin's work resides in private and public collections and museums. His sculptures in museums include the Head of a Pony, 1947, in grey granite at The Fogg Museum at Harvard; the Camel, 1947, in white marble, and the Ram, 1945, in sandstone and lead at The Parrish Art Museum on Southampton, New York; the Ape, 1953, in the collection of the Philadelphia Zoo; Head of the Prophet Isaiah 1952 at the Jewish Museum in New York City; the Pelican circa 1954 at the St. Lawrence University, Richard F. Brush Art Gallery, Canton, New York; and Bear Cub 1966 at the Smithsonian Institution, National Zoological Park, Washington, D.C.Lipkin's other work residing at museums include The East River, N.Y.C. painting 1928 at the Luce Center of the New-York Historical Society; John Brown bas-relief at the Howard University Law Society in Washington, D.C.;

and a sculpture at the Maritime Industry Museum, Fort Schuyler, N.Y.;Phil Katzman independent filmmaker and associate professor of radio, television, film at Hofstra University, documented Lipkin's life and work in his film, From Stone: Jacob Lipkin, an American Sculptor, which aired on PBS in 1988.

Lipkin told Kermit Jaediker, a reporter at the New York Daily News in January 1960, "Life is funny. All my life I have been banging away to get into the hall of fame. One day I fail to pay a bill, and fame sneaks in my back door." Jacob Lipkin died of cancer at the age of 87 years on April 27, 1996, in West Babylon, New York.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023