The Accordion Player

This dynamic sculpture represents a figure playing an accordion, with one shoulder raised as if exerting force whilst manipulating the instrument. A single line runs down the back of the sculpture from its raised shoulder, indicating its musculature. Staggered legs, which stop at the thighs, also suggest animation. Zadkine appreciated music and after creating this sculpture took up the instrument himself in 1920, playing it for the next forty years. The accordion was a subject for a number of Zadkine’s works in sculpture and on paper.

As well as being a personal interest, the accordion serves a compositional function with its blocky form and repeated vertical lines. Zadkine often made linear works with parallel lines representing floorboards, fingers, or a fan. He broke down forms to simple geometries but layered them in complex ways. The verticality of the upright figure is subtly intersected by horizontals, including in the three lines indicating the fingers of the left hand whilst the right hand is a solid block. This echoes the treatment of the face, which is simpler on the right-hand side as the detail of the eye is only found on the left. The face is suggested on a flat plane with a simple straight nose meeting two arched eyebrows.

The sculpture is Cubist in approach, and Zadkine had been inspired by Picasso and Braque when he encountered their work after moving to Paris in 1910. Before reaching Paris, Zadkine spent time in London where he got to know David Bomberg, an artist who worked in the Vorticist style, who had an interest in portraying movement.

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