The Rape of Europa

A Jewish sculptor born in Lithuania, who took French and later American nationality, Jacques Lipchitz had moved away from Cubism when he created this bronze, whose sensual curves are reminiscent of Pablo Picasso’s Surrealist bacchanals and minotaurs. In classical mythology, the Phoenician princess Europa was seduced by Jupiter, who took the form of a white bull and carried her on his back to the Mediterranean island of Crete. The artist drew inspiration for the aquatic forms from a Coptic bronze piece in his collection. Violence would follow seduction: in 1941 – the year he immigrated to the United States – Lipchitz made a work that portrays Europa stabbing a Hitlerian bull.