Elie Nadelman

Elie Nadelman , 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.

Bibliography: See biography by L. Kirstein (1973).

Nadelman, Elie (1882–1946). Polish-born sculptor who became an American citizen in 1927. After brief studies in his native Warsaw and in Munich, he settled in Paris in 1903 or 1904 and lived there until 1914. With the outbreak of the First World War, Nadelman moved to London and then New York. He had a successful one-man show at Stieglitz's gallery in 1915 and was befriended by Paul Manship and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney among others. His patrons included Helena Rubinstein (he had known her in Paris), who commissioned him to make sleek marble heads for her beauty salons. He married a wealthy widow in 1919 and his work has a witty sophistication appropriate to the high society world he moved in, as with the delightful bowler-hatted bronze Man in the Open Air (1915, MoMA, New York). With his humour went a bold simplification and distortion of forms that places him alongside Lachaise as one of the pioneers of modern sculpture in America. The Depression had a disastrous effect on his market and his career virtually ended when much of his work was accidentally destroyed in 1935.

Nadelman, Elie (b Warsaw, 20 Feb. 1882; d New York, 28 Dec. 1946). Polish-born sculptor who became an American citizen in 1927. After brief studies in his native Warsaw and in Munich, he settled in Paris in 1903 or 1904 and lived there until 1914. With the outbreak of the First World War, Nadelman moved to London and then New York. He had a successful one-man show at Stieglitz's gallery in 1915 and was befriended by Paul Manship and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney among others. His patrons included Helena Rubinstein (he had known her in Paris), who commissioned him to make sleek marble heads for her beauty salons. He married a wealthy widow in 1919 and his work has a witty sophistication appropriate to the high-society world he moved in, as with the delightful bowler-hatted bronze Man in the Open Air (1915, MoMA, New York). With his humour went a bold simplification and distortion of forms that places him alongside Lachaise as one of the pioneers of modern sculpture in America. The Depression had a disastrous effect on his market and his career virtually ended when much of his work was accidentally destroyed in 1935.