Existing comment:
Walter Pach, 1883-1958
Most stories about the Armory Show play down Walter Pach's significant role, focusing mainly on his involvement as an agent for the European artists in the exhibition. As an art critic, historian, lecturer, agent, and champion of modernism, Pach was a driving force behind the pivotal 1913 show, along with Walt Kuhn and Arthur B. Davies. Pach's presence in the transatlantic contemporary art world -- with one foot in the United States and the other in Paris between 1903 and 1913 -- shaped the arc of the show. During this time, he befriended influential artists and thinkers, including the French cubist painter and printmaker Jacques Villon, who was the younger brother of Marcel Duchamp. In his sensitive ink-and-pencil sketch, Villon captures an introspective man who considered himself primarily an artist. The drawing is a study for Villon's oil portrait of Pach, now in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
Jacques Villon, 1932 |