Elie Nadelman

Nadelman, Elie, 1882-1946, Polish-American sculptor, b. Warsaw. He spent some time in Paris and is said to have influenced Picasso. Before he settled (1914) in the United States his work was exhibited in New York City at the Armory Show in 1913. His gracefully rounded sculptures, most often in wood or metal, have a smooth, often witty simplicity and a suavely elegant charm that have sometimes been likened to sophisticated versions of folk art, which he avidly collected. Nadelman also worked in marble, cast plaster and papier-mâché, glazed ceramic, a form of electroplating, and other media. Probably his most famous bronze is Man in the Open Air (c.1915; Mus. of Modern Art, New York City), an urbane figure clad only in a small bow tie and bowler hat, in a jaunty pose slightly reminiscent of classical antiquity. Nadelman was comparatively unknown until interest in him was revived by a retrospective exhibition (1948) at the Museum of Modern Art. His reputation was again enhanced by another retrospective (2003) at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art.

See biography by L. Kirstein (1973).

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Elie Nadelman

Elie Nadelman (February 20, 1882, Warsaw - December 28, 1946) was an American sculptor, draughtsman and collector of Polish birth.

Early Years

Nadelman studied briefly in Warsaw and then visited Munich in 1902 where he became interested in Classical antiquities at the Glytothek. He lived in Paris from 1904 to 1914, closely involved with the avant-guarde, exhibiting at the Société des Artistes Indépendants and at the Salon d'Automne from 1905 to 1908. His first solo exhibition in 1909 at the Galerie Druet, Paris, revealed a large series of plaster and bronze classical female heads and full-length standing nudes and mannered Cubist drawings; the latter purchased by Leo Stein, who had brought Picasso to Nadelman's studio in 1908. For the most detailed and accurate studies of Nadelman's work from 1905-12, which was of crucial importance for early 20th c. modern sculpture, see Athena T. Spear in Bibliography.

He moved to the United States (becoming an American citizen in 1927) during the outbreak of World War I, married Mrs. Viola Flannery, a wealthy heiress,and assembled a large, museum quality collection of folk sculpture. At the same time, his own style was at times Classical, at times decorative, and at times a new kind of sophisticated urban folk art. He attempted to release large, inexpensive editions of his simple, classical, Tanagra-like small figures.

The Depression

From the 1920s, until his death, Nadelman lived and worked in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx.

Eventually, as his wealth vanished in the Depression and his work failed to interest the art world, he became more peripheral to the collectors of Modernism, he did not take commissions other than portraits, his folk-art collection was sold to pay the bills. He held his last one-man exhibition in 1930 (Paris, Bernheim-Jeune). In 1935 many of his plaster figures and wood-carvings were destroyed by workmen sent to remodel his studio. Nadelman packed away all his pre-1935 work in the attic and cellar of his home in Riverdale and left it there to disintegrate. After his death on 28, December, 1946, his sculpture "Man in the Open Air", was restored and reintroduced in a retrospective at MOMA, New York. His reputation has grown since his death, and his work is in many major museums and surveys of American art history.

References

Bibliography

Busch, Julia M., A Decade of Sculpture: the New Media in the 1960's (The Art Alliance Press: Philadelphia; Associated University Presses: London, 1974) ISBN 0-87982-007-1
Haskell, Barbara, Elie Nadelman: Sculptor of Modern Life, Whitney Museum: New York, 2003. ISBN 0-87427-130-4
Kirstein, Lincoln, Elie Nadelman, Eakins Press, 1973. ISBN 0-87130-035-4
Spear, Athena Tacha, "Elie Nadelman's Early Heads (1905-1911)," Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin, XXVIII, 3, Spring 1971, pp. 201-222.
Spear, Athena Tacha, "The Multiple Styles of Elie Nadelman: Drawings and Figure Sculptures ca. 1905-12," Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin,XXXI, 1, 1973-74, pp. 34-58.