14 Facts About Ossip Zadkine

Ossip Alexeevich Zadkine was a Russian and French artist of the School of Paris.

Ossip Zadkine is best known as a sculptor, but produced paintings and lithographs.

Ossip Zadkine was born to a baptized Jewish father and a mother named Zippa-Dvoyra, who he claimed to be of Scottish origin.

Ossip Zadkine studied in the Yury Pen's art school with would-be artists Marc Chagall and Victor Mekler.

Ossip Zadkine had 5 siblings: sisters Mira, Roza and Fania and brothers Mark and Moses.

Ossip Zadkine claimed in his memoir that at the age of fifteen he had been sent by his father to Sunderland in the north of England, to stay with distant Scottish relatives and learn some "good manners".

Ossip Zadkine then moved to London and attended lessons at the Regent Street Polytechnic where he won a prize for modelling in 1908 but considered the teachers to be too conservative.

Ossip Zadkine studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts for six months.

Ossip Zadkine later developed his own style, one that was strongly influenced by African and Greek art.

Ossip Zadkine served as a stretcher-bearer in the French Army during World War I, and was wounded in action.

Ossip Zadkine taught sculpture classes at Academie de la Grande Chaumiere until 1958, students of his included artists Geula Dagan, Gunnar Aagaard Andersen and Genevieve Pezet.

Ossip Zadkine died in Paris in 1967 at the age of 79 after undergoing abdominal surgery and was interred in the Cimetiere du Montparnasse.

Ossip Zadkine lived in Les Arques for a number of years, and while there, carved an enormous Christ on the Cross and Pieta that are featured in the 12th-century church which stands opposite the museum.

Ossip Zadkine was a neighbor in Montparnasse and a friend of Henry Miller and was represented by the character "Borowski" in Miller's novel, Tropic of Cancer.