Hans Hildebrandt’s invocation of ‘happier times with a more certain sense of form’, discussed at the outset, was published in 1923, the same year Archipenko left Berlin for America. It likely mirrors Archipenko’s own sense of nostalgia for what both he and Hildebrandt perceived as a less fractured pre-war community of modernism. In later years Archipenko fondly recalled the shared ideals of the Section d’Or in Paris, ‘a group of artists working in various styles, not merely Cubism. Our greatest demonstration in Paris was in October, 1912, in a triumphant exhibition [at the Gelerie La Boétie]Ö In 1914 war disrupted our unity. After the war was over, conflicts began to brew.’ Archipenko would never again find himself part of such cohesiveness, whether real or imagined. Once Berlin had seemed to offer just that possibility; but as early as January 1923, having lost significant support in modernist circles and burdened by Germany’s great inflation, Archipenko began making plans to leave Berlin, and what he now called ‘the madness of EuropeÖ a place destined for catastrophe’. In something of a farewell letter to Hildebrandt, Archipenko writes of his imminent departure and reflects on his years in Germany:

‘In fourteen days we will be on the ocean toward an unknown future. Already now I feel that I am detached from European soil; the events and times of my stay in Germany seem already long-passed, but the future I only see as ethereal. I am outside of time and place, [as] if it could be otherwise.’