Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts

Provenance:
The artist, New York
Estate of the artist, New York
Private collection, New York

Recorded:
Kirstein, Lincoln. Elie Nadelman, Eakins Press, 1973, p. 306.
Elie Nadelman, San Francisco: Hackett Freedman Gallery, 2000, illus. in color, p. 23.

Kirstein writes in his notes toward a catalogue raisonnée (p. 306):
Two marble versions exist, one possibly unfinished; there is a single bronze cast (private collection, New York City); drawings exist, the gift of Wright Ludington to the Santa Barbara Museum, Santa Barbara, CA.

Known for his modern form of classicism, Elie Nadelman drew inspiration for his sculptures and drawings from a range of sources, including Hellenistic art, Italian Mannerism, Art Nouveau and American Folk Art. Born in 1882 in Warsaw, Poland, which was then under Russian control, the artist briefly attended the Warsaw Art Academy before volunteering to serve in the Imperial Army. After completing his military service, which consisted of teaching drawing and flute to the officers’ children, Nadelman returned to the Warsaw Academy for one year and afterward received a prize for a drawing that he had submitted to a magazine contest. With the prize money, Nadelman traveled first to Munich, and then settled in Paris by the end of 1904; he lived there until the outbreak of World War I, when he immigrated to the United States with assistance from the collector and cosmetics industrialist Helena Rubenstein.

It was in Paris that Nadelman’s artistic career blossomed. In addition to the inclusion of his works at the Salon d’Automne exhibitions of 1905 and 1906, his drawings and sculptures were selected for the 1907 Salon des Indépendants. Through these avenues, he became increasingly well-connected in the Parisian art community and was often present at the gatherings of Leo and Gertrude Stein, where he made the acquaintance of Picasso. In the spring of 1909 Nadelman mounted his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Druet, which not only received acclaim from critics and collectors but also culminated in the artist’s relationship with the New York photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz. In the October 1910 issue of his journal Camera Work, Stieglitz published a statement by Nadelman in which the sculptor formulated his artistic concerns, declaring, “I employ no other line than the curve, which possesses freshness and force. I compose these curves so as to bring them in accord or opposition to one another. In that way I obtain the life of form, i.e., harmony.”¹

Nadelman’s objectives, which remained consistent throughout his career, are beautifully expressed in this elegant marble sculpture of a duck that was created in the 1930s. Similar to his nonnarrative human subjects, the artist’s interest in depicting animals primarily addressed the formal properties of line and volume. Purging the sculpture of nearly all surface detail, Nadelman reduced the duck’s body to a closed, sinuous form; the stylized contortion of the animal’s elongated neck, which gracefully conforms to the reciprocal arch of its back, creates a crisp, pleasing outline. The sumptuous curves of the duck’s retracted head and neck balance the fluid lines demarcating its wings and exquisitely pointed tail feathers. The harmoniousness of the animal’s contours endows the sculpture with a rhythmic lyricism that bespeaks the charming sophistication of Nadelman’s simplified compositions and the primacy of decorative form in his art.