Elie Nadelman

Elie Nadelman (born Eliasz Nadelman; February 20, 1882 – December 28, 1946) was a Polish-American sculptor, draughtsman of the School of Paris and a collector of folk art.

Early years

Nadelman was born into a Jewish family in Warsaw in 1882. Nadelman's work in this early period (1905–1912) was of crucial importance for early 20th-century modern sculpture.

He moved to the United States (becoming an American citizen in 1927) during the outbreak of World War I. He married Mrs. Viola Flannery, a wealthy heiress, in 1920. He and his wife assembled a large collection of folk art and erected a Museum of Folk Arts in Riverdale, N.Y. in 1925.

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. In 1937 the collection of the Museum of Folk Arts was sold to the New York Historical Society. 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, in Riverdale, on December 28, 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.

Works

Circus Women David H. Koch Theater (reproduction) Dancer (1918) Wadsworth Atheneum, (Hartford) Dancer (c. 1920-1922) Jewish Museum (New York) Dancing Girl (1916–1918) Honolulu Museum of Art Ideal Head Honolulu Museum of Art Man in the Open Air Museum of Modern Art, New York City Standing Nude Metropolitan Museum of Art Two Nudes David H. Koch Theater (reproduction) The Resting Stag Honolulu Museum of Art The Wounded Stag Honolulu Museum of Art Chanteuse Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts