- 15
ELIE NADELMAN | Seated Female Figure
Estimate
600,000 - 800,000 USD
bidding is closed
Description
- Elie Nadelman
- Seated Female Figure
- stained wood
- height: 17 3/4 inches (45.1 cm) on a 1/2 inch (1.3 cm) black metal base
- Executed circa 1909-15.
Provenance
The artist
Estate of the above
Private collection, 1960s (acquired from the above)
By descent to the present owner
Estate of the above
Private collection, 1960s (acquired from the above)
By descent to the present owner
Exhibited
Toronto, Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, October 1974-August 1979 (on loan)
Indianapolis, Indiana, Indianapolis Museum of Art, November 2001-June 2005 (on loan)
Indianapolis, Indiana, Indianapolis Museum of Art, November 2001-June 2005 (on loan)
Condition
Please contact the American Art department for this condition report: (212) 606 7280 or Colton.Klein@sothebys.com
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.
Catalogue Note
After relocating to Paris in 1904, Elie Nadelman sought to establish an individual aesthetic for his body of work while cementing his place in the local art scene. In the years that followed he would try to reconcile the wide-ranging artistic influence of his contemporaries—from Adolf van Hildebrand who theorized on the superiority of Classical, highly naturalistic sculpture, to the modern aesthetic promoted in Auguste Rodin’s expressive sculpture (Barbara Haskell, Elie Nadelman: Sculptor of Modern Life, New York, 2003, p. 28). As such, Seated Female Figure, conceived and probably executed between 1909 and 1915, illustrates a key moment in the stylistic evolution of Nadelman’s approach to figural sculpture from this formative period of his career.
In 1909, Nadelman was awarded a solo exhibition at the Galerie E. Druet in Paris—a leading gallery in the commercial art world, Druet promoted the work of avant-garde European and American Modernists until 1916 and played a most significant role in the American Armory Show of 1913. In his 1909 solo show, Nadelman exhibited over one hundred drawings and 13 plaster models, including forms he would later revisit in wood. Nadelman continued to revisit forms similar to Seated Female Figure upon his arrival in America in 1914.
The artist’s affection for classicized nudes was by this time altogether transformed to abstract representations of the female body, reduced to rounded silhouettes with elongated proportions. In Seated Female Figure, the woman’s limbs are tubular in form with softly bowed arms and the proper left leg of the figure is bent in an angular line. Similarly, the level of surface detail is simplified. While the artist’s somewhat later figural sculptures were Classical representations carved with anatomical accuracy and decorated with naturalistic detail, often complete with textured hair either raised with coifs of curls or notched with wavy locks, Seated Female Figure's head is pear-shaped and void of any distinguishable facial features. An architectural form bands horizontally across the reverse of the figure’s head perhaps representative of a modern hairstyle worn by women of the period. As such, this type of head likely stems from the period of the 1909 exhibition in Paris.
Nadelman’s success as a sculptor reached new heights in the early 1910s while still living abroad in Paris. Some of his earlier works from 1909 were included in the Armory Show of 1913 and in May of the same year Galerie E. Druet hosted a second exhibition for Nadelman which showcased his highly stylized nude figures and more classical heads in bronze and marble.
Nadelman’s body of work would eventually combine the many sources of art theory and practice that consumed Modernist artists in the early 20th century. Nadelman’s time in Europe pushed him toward experimenting with abstract movements like Cubism during these formative years. In the Whitney Museum of American Art’s catalogue for the 2003 retrospective exhibition of Nadelman’s work, Barbara Haskell concluded, “Nadelman found in modernism’s exclusive emphasis on formal values a license to ignore subject matter and thereby obliterate reminders of the ethnic, religious, and social distinctions upon which nationalism rests. Choosing modernist abstraction over subject matter allowed him to pursue a timeless, universal art based on order, reason and harmony. At a time when sculptors were seeking an alternative to the hegemony of Auguste Rodin and the Symbolist aesthetic, Nadelman’s formulation of a sculptural vocabulary based on the simplified geometric forms of Greek classical art won enthusiastic welcome. At age twenty-seven he captured the attention of the Parisian art world” (Ibid, p. 9).
In 1909, Nadelman was awarded a solo exhibition at the Galerie E. Druet in Paris—a leading gallery in the commercial art world, Druet promoted the work of avant-garde European and American Modernists until 1916 and played a most significant role in the American Armory Show of 1913. In his 1909 solo show, Nadelman exhibited over one hundred drawings and 13 plaster models, including forms he would later revisit in wood. Nadelman continued to revisit forms similar to Seated Female Figure upon his arrival in America in 1914.
The artist’s affection for classicized nudes was by this time altogether transformed to abstract representations of the female body, reduced to rounded silhouettes with elongated proportions. In Seated Female Figure, the woman’s limbs are tubular in form with softly bowed arms and the proper left leg of the figure is bent in an angular line. Similarly, the level of surface detail is simplified. While the artist’s somewhat later figural sculptures were Classical representations carved with anatomical accuracy and decorated with naturalistic detail, often complete with textured hair either raised with coifs of curls or notched with wavy locks, Seated Female Figure's head is pear-shaped and void of any distinguishable facial features. An architectural form bands horizontally across the reverse of the figure’s head perhaps representative of a modern hairstyle worn by women of the period. As such, this type of head likely stems from the period of the 1909 exhibition in Paris.
Nadelman’s success as a sculptor reached new heights in the early 1910s while still living abroad in Paris. Some of his earlier works from 1909 were included in the Armory Show of 1913 and in May of the same year Galerie E. Druet hosted a second exhibition for Nadelman which showcased his highly stylized nude figures and more classical heads in bronze and marble.
Nadelman’s body of work would eventually combine the many sources of art theory and practice that consumed Modernist artists in the early 20th century. Nadelman’s time in Europe pushed him toward experimenting with abstract movements like Cubism during these formative years. In the Whitney Museum of American Art’s catalogue for the 2003 retrospective exhibition of Nadelman’s work, Barbara Haskell concluded, “Nadelman found in modernism’s exclusive emphasis on formal values a license to ignore subject matter and thereby obliterate reminders of the ethnic, religious, and social distinctions upon which nationalism rests. Choosing modernist abstraction over subject matter allowed him to pursue a timeless, universal art based on order, reason and harmony. At a time when sculptors were seeking an alternative to the hegemony of Auguste Rodin and the Symbolist aesthetic, Nadelman’s formulation of a sculptural vocabulary based on the simplified geometric forms of Greek classical art won enthusiastic welcome. At age twenty-seven he captured the attention of the Parisian art world” (Ibid, p. 9).