ELIE NADELMAN

(1882-1946)

Standing Female Nude 16 1/2 in. (41.9 cm.) high

Footnotes

Provenance
Moses Soyer (1889-1974), New York.
By descent to the present owners from the above.

Produced at the height of Elie Nadelman's formative years in Paris, Standing Female Nude modeled and cast around 1909 is a seminal work in the artist's oeuvre that resides prominently between the rise of modernism and traditions of antiquity. Nadelman's interpretation of classical aesthetic principles blended with his innovative techniques of design aimed at simplifying form to its purest linear essence distinguished him from his contemporaries. Standing Female Nude exemplifies both Nadelman's burgeoning interest in achieving beauty through the stripping of form to its essentials, and his resistance to the melodramatic, expressive artistic practices of August Rodin (1840-1917) and the Symbolists whose work he studied in his early years as a budding young artist in Warsaw. Through its unbroken contours and stylized geometry, Standing Female Nude boldly and radically declares Nadelman's principle philosophy that formal values alone determine artistic quality.

Nadelman was born in Warsaw, Poland on February 20, 1882, and received his first formal instruction in the arts at Warsaw's School of Drawing. By 1904, Nadelman moved to Munich where he would spend six months absorbing the doctrines and styles that would form the basis of his artistic career. While in Munich, he became acquainted with Adolf von Hildebrand's (1847-1921) aesthetic principles on figure and form, which would influence his approach and find their way into Nadelman's later manifestos on art. For Hildebrand, subject matter and personal expression were irrelevant and the unity of form attained through distinct outlines, compact form, and smooth, balanced surfaces were what mattered in the creation of art. Antiquity epitomized these qualities of formal unity, particularly from the early classical period in Greek art preceding the Hellenistic age. Hildebrand developed his own form of classicism devoid of ornamentation and sensual, unnecessary features, as seen in his revered Philoctetes (1886, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany) where ornamentation has been stripped from the figure and emphasis has been placed on the purity of form.

Munich offered Nadelman a rich trove of early classical Greek art through the collections of the Glyptothek. There, he could study the prized sculpture that once adorned the east and west pediments of the Temple of Aphaia on the island of Aegina. Similar to Hildebrand's work, the compact, volumetric simplicity and the absence of ornamental detail and overt expressions of emotion that characterize these sculptures would have an everlasting impact on Nadelman's stylistic development. Each figure's gesture is fixed and their bodies are arrested in motion, elements that would become central to Nadelman's work by the time he emigrated to the United States in 1914. Nadelman also found inspiration in the female nudes of the sixteenth-century sculptor Giambologna (1529-1608) that are characterized by their elongated, sinuous linearity and bland, ovoid faces. Unlike his contemporaries who viewed classical art as something to reject in favor of experimenting with modernism, Nadelman treated the lexicon of antiquity as a guide in his search to uncover the true beauty found in the essentials of form.

Later that year, Nadelman moved to Paris after winning second place for his drawing Bemol (B Minor) submitted to a drawing competition calling for drawings inspired by the music of Polish composer Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) and sponsored by the monthly Polish-language journal Sztuka. With the five hundred francs won in the competition, Nadelman was able to finance his move to Paris where he quickly immersed himself in the city's vibrant art scene where debates about modernism, classicism, and abstraction were at the forefront of the discussions taking place within avant-garde circles. Nadelman would begin his residency in Paris working to reconcile the simplified classicism promoted by Hildebrand and protean aesthetic philosopher, Mécislas Goldberg (1869-1907) with the melodramatic themes and expressive vocabulary of Rodin. Success would finally come for Nadelman in November of 1905 when three of his drawings and a plaster figure were accepted into that year's Salon d'Automne exhibition. Though unnoticed by the French press, Nadelman's inclusion in the Salon d'Automne helped solidify his position in the art world at a critical point in the evolution of modernism and his participation exposed him to Aristide Maillol's (1861-1944) The Mediterranean that attracted widespread critical acclaim. Maillol's simplification of geometric forms and smooth, curving surfaces that paid homage to Greek sculpture would have appealed to Nadelman.

By 1908, Nadelman was successfully fashioning an artistic vocabulary rooted in classical principles and was producing a series of heads and female figures that would come to define his early style. His sculpture produced during this period reveals his interest in reducing form to clean, continuous contours and stylized geometry. As Barbara Haskell notes, "Following Hildebrand's prescriptions for plastic unity, he replaced excessively kneaded surfaces and histrionic themes with self-contained subjects and simplified geometric forms. Out-flung limbs and gestural surfaces yielded to immediately perceived subjects with distinct outlines and architectonic volumes. Although the rounded forms, smooth surfaces, and nonnarrative subjects of Nadelman's work allied it with that of others who were turning to ancient art for inspiration, critics found his sculptures particularly reminiscent of the pedimental figures from Aegina's Temple of Aphaia." (B. Haskell, Elie Nadelman: Sculptor of Modern Life, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2003, pp. 29-30) Nadelman eventually attracted the attention of Thadée Natanson (1868-1951), the highly regarded co-owner of the popular French art and literary magazine, La revue blanche that featured the work of some of the greatest artists and writers of the time. In Natanson, Nadelman secured a respected patron and introductions to other Parisian art world notables, such as André Gide (1869-1951), Octave Mirbeau (1848-1917), Leo Stein (1872-1947), as well as his sister, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), and his future dealer, Eugène Druet (1867-1916).

In April 1909, Nadelman secured his first one-man exhibition at Galerie E. Druet. Eugene Druet was one of the most influential commercial agents of modernist art in Paris at the time and in 1913, would lend more works to America's Armory Show than any other single contributor. To be included in Druet's roster garnered Nadelman notable attention and a level of prestige not previously afforded to him. The exhibit displayed Nadelman's full range of artistic abilities through thirteen plaster models and one hundred drawings. His radical simplification of form and stylized distortion of shape became a point of debate about the future of sculpture, "Reportedly disturbing even Picasso and stimulating Amedeo Modigliani to turn temporarily to sculpture." (B. Haskell, Elie Nadelman: Sculptor of Modern Life, p. 31)

Modeled and cast around the same year, Standing Female Nude masterfully reveals Nadelman's unique, evolving style that would have been on full display at his one-man exhibition at Duret's gallery. For the present work, Nadelman utilizes curved, simplified lines to construct her form that bestows her figure with geometric harmony and aesthetic significance. Standing in contrapposto and gazing downward with her head turned to her left in profile, Nadelman has frozen the expressive gestures of her hands in a manner reminiscent of the sculptures of Hildebrand and the Temple of Aphaia. Furthermore, Nadelman models her devoid of ornamentation and removes any identifying details he considers irrelevant. Her ovoid face, almond eyes, and the curls of her hair recall the classical modeling techniques of Giambologna's female figures and the smooth, curved surfaces employed by Maillol. The resulting image is one that ultimately crystallizes his approach of achieving beauty through the simplification of essential form and reveals his appreciation for the shared aesthetic conventions among artworks from different time periods, cultures, and aesthetic hierarchies.

By the time Nadelman sailed aboard the Lusitania to New York in 1914, Nadelman had forged the foundations of his artistic identity and created a body of work that was both highly original and deeply rooted in classical aesthetic traditions. The present work imbues Nadelman's devotion to classical sculpture, his resistance to Rodin's expressive practices, and his openness to modernist currents. Standing Female Nude, through its clarity, restraint, and elegance, is a notable example produced during the most formidable period in Nadelman's artistic life and exhibits the aesthetic principles that would guide him throughout the remainder of his career.