Raymond Duchamp-VillonArticle Free Pass Raymond Duchamp-Villon,
original name Raymond Duchamp (born November 5, 1876, Paris,
France—died October 7, 1918, Cannes), French sculptor who was
one of the first major modern artists to apply the principles of
Cubism to sculpture. In 1900 Duchamp-Villon gave up medical
school for sculpture, often working closely with his brothers,
the artists Gaston (better known by his pseudonym, Jacques
Villon) and Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp-Villon’s early work was
influenced by Auguste Rodin’s figurative sculpture, but he
converted to a Cubist style in 1910. His progression to more
simplified forms can be seen in the portrait heads Baudelaire
(1911) and Maggy (1911), which were virtually reduced to simple
geometric shapes. With works such as Seated Woman (1914),
Duchamp-Villon increasingly employed the Cubist painters’
technique of dissecting an object into abstract shapes. Duchamp-
Villon’s move toward abstraction was fully achieved in his
masterpiece, Horse (1914), which reduces form