Art Deco bronze and Ivory sculpture entitled "Starfish" by Demetre Chiparus Circa: 1925

A fabulous early 20^th Century Art Deco cold painted silver and enamel bronze sculpture with ivory face and hands representing a young female Ballets Russes dancer wearing a metallic blue skin tight leotard further decorated in a bejewelled starfish pattern, modelled reaching upwards with both arms, her hands interlaced. Raised on a shaped onyx base, and signed D H Chiparus.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Height: 37cm

Width: 12 cm

Depth: 7.5 cm

Condition: Excellent Original Condition

Circa: 1925

Materials: Bronze, Ivory & Onyx

Book Ref: Chiparus Master of Art Deco by A Shayo

Page No: 152

SKU: 8770

Defra Ref: 9M1PGHDB

ABOUT

Chiparus – The Master of Art Deco

Romanian by birth, Chiparus worked entirely in Paris, first exhibiting in the Salon of 1914. He is best known for his figures or exotic dancer made of carved ivory and highly worked bronze. The subjects of these chryselephantine works were taken from popular personalities of the day, from contemporary theatre characters and the Orientalist zeitgeist in Paris in the interwar years, as exemplified by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russe.

Chiparus’s early figures, those on a relatively simple bases, were primarily cast by Etling, a Paris foundry the retailer of contemporary French decorative arts in the 1920s and 1930s. The later pieces were made by the Les Neveux de J Lehmann foundry which specialised in making the more elaborate marble and onyx plinths.

The Ballets Russes

The Ballets Russes was a ballet company established in 1909 by the Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev and performed until his death in 1929. It created a sensation in Western Europe because of the great vitality of Russian ballet compared to French dance and penetrated every facet of entertainment. The great Paris music halls, the Folies Bergère, the Casino de Paris, the Moulin Rouge and others put on spectacular shows inspired by the Ballet Russes.

Chiparus attended the music halls and purchased all the magazines which illustrated the dancers. His wife and occasional models posed for him as he varied some of the photographed illustrations, never wasting a good attitude, this gave Chiparus an inexhaustible supply of material and influence from which he derived his most flamboyant, exotic and dramatic statues, frozen in spectacular attitudes, tall and sensuous. Chiparus’s repertoire symbolises a brief golden era and the sculptures that survived stand graceful, self-confident and proudly decorative

This object incorporates old ivory and has been registered with Defra

This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance

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