(16 September 1886, Dorohoi, Romania – 22 January 1947, Paris, France)
In 1909, at the age of 23, Chiparus goes to Italy to study with the sculptor Raffaello Romanelli. He then goes to Paris to attend to the Ecole des Beaux Arts as a student of Antonin Mercie and Jean Boucher.
Among his first sculptures, which began creating in 1914, there was his series of children. His style matured in the ’20s and between 1914 and 1933 he made his most famous works of dancers in glamour costumes. Known for their luminous effect, his sculptures were strongly influenced by the human shape; the dancers of Russian ballet, French theatre and even of the first movies are all among his most important subjects. Following the search for the Tutankhamon’s tomb, he even developed an interest for every egyptian thing.
After World War II, when the production of sculptures stopped, Chiparus started sculpting for his own pleasure. At that point his subjects were animals, which he depicted in the same Art Déco style. It was on one of his returns from a study trip to the Vincennes’s Zoo that he suffered from a stroke and died in Paris in 1947. He’s buried in the south of Paris, in the Bagneux graveyard.
