American Art Collaborative

Arriving in the United States in 1914, after ten years steeped in the avant-garde world of Paris, Polish-born Elie Nadelman created a body of work that married classicism with the stylized fluidity of folk art. Infatuated with American popular culture, he produced a series of white plaster figurines depicting contemporary figures, including vaudeville and circus performers. Nadelman later reproduced these sinuous forms in wood, applying gesso and colored paint, often unevenly, and then distressing the surface in order to suggest the patina of age.