Chaim Jakob Lipchitz was born on August 22, 1891 as son of French-American parents in Druskieniki, Lithuania. At first, under the influence of his father, he studied engineering, but soon after, supported by his mother, who saw his artistic talent, he moved to Paris in1909 to study at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian. It was at this time that he changed his first name to Jacques and he was soon in the company of Picasso, Juan Gris, Modigliani and the Cubist circles in the artistic communities of Montmartre and Montparnasse which had considerable influence on his work. Living in this environment, Lipchitz soon began to create Cubist sculptures. In 1912 he exhibited at the Salon National des Beaux-Arts and the Salon d'Automne with his first one-man show held at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie L’Effort Moderne in Paris in 1920. In 1922 he was commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania for five bas-reliefs.

With artistic innovation at its height, in the 1920s he experimented with abstract forms he called transparent sculptures. Later he developed a more dynamic style, which he applied with telling effect to bronze figure and animal compositions. Angular structures gave way to an unconstrained sculptural style, which expressed itself in the free use of natural forms that became increasingly organic. In 1930 the first retrospective of his work took place at the 'Galerie de la Renaissance' in Paris, followed by the first major exhibition at the 'Brummer Gallery' in New York in 1935. Lipchitz completed his 'Prometheus' for the 1937 Paris World Exposition and was awarded a gold medel for the sculpture.

With the German occupation of France during World War II, and the deportation of Jews to the Nazi death camps, Jacques Lipchitz had to flee France. When German troops occupied Paris in 1940, Lipchitz fled to Toulouse, from where he soon left France for good and went to the US, where he settled in New York. In New York his work was soon regularly shown at the 'Buchholz Gallery', which later became 'Curt Valentin Gallery'.

In 1947 Lipchitz moved to Hastings-on-Hudson in New York state. From the 1950s on, Lipchitz's work was honored with numerous exhibitions and awards such as retrospectives in New York and Minneapolis in 1954. From 1962 Lipchitz received numerous important public commissions both in the US and Israel, including 'Peace on Earth', a nearly 15 meter high bronze sculpture that was unveiled in Los Angeles in 1969.

In 1972 his autobiography was published on the occasion of an exhibition of his sculpture at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Jacques Lipchitz died in Capri, Italy one year later in 1973. His body was flown to Jerusalem for burial.

His second wife, the Berlin sculptor Y. Halberstadt, completed the colossal sculpture 'Our Tree of Life', which had been commissioned for Mount Scopus in Israel, and set it up on Jerusalem's highest hill in honour of her husband.