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Lot Essay
In the mid-1920s, Elie Nadelman experimented with large-scale sculpture of female figures in a variety of gestural poses, which make "these figures appear to have been caught in moments of private self-absorption, oblivious to the world outside themselves." The purposely mysterious aura of Nadelman's work from this period, including Seated Woman with Raised Arm (Circus Woman), is enhanced by their "softened contours and indistinct facial demarcations...With their great, strong thighs and exaggeratedly small feet, they project a monumentality at once vulnerable and self-contained." (B. Haskell, Elie Nadelman: Sculptor of Modern Life, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2003, pp. 157-58, 161)
Nadelman originally cast Seated Woman with Raised Arm using the galvano-plastique technique of electroplating the surface of plaster with a thin veneer of metal. As Barbara Haskell explains, "The medium appealed to Nadelman because of its potential for unusual finishes and its ability to replicate bronze...He scratched these mottled, alchemical surfaces with a file to evoke the weathered appearance of antiquities and to create an allover surface shimmer." (Elie Nadelman: Sculptor of Modern Life, p. 157)
The artist's estate later authorized casts of Seated Woman with Raised Arm to be produced in bronze with a similar scratched and weathered surface texture. In 1965, two casts were produced at Roman Bronze Works, including the present work at the behest of Nelson Rockefeller. In the mid-1980s, a third bronze of the model was cast at Bedi-Makky and exhibited in the garden of the residence of the U.S. Ambassador in London as part of the Department of State's Art in Embassies program.
Nadelman originally cast Seated Woman with Raised Arm using the galvano-plastique technique of electroplating the surface of plaster with a thin veneer of metal. As Barbara Haskell explains, "The medium appealed to Nadelman because of its potential for unusual finishes and its ability to replicate bronze...He scratched these mottled, alchemical surfaces with a file to evoke the weathered appearance of antiquities and to create an allover surface shimmer." (Elie Nadelman: Sculptor of Modern Life, p. 157)
The artist's estate later authorized casts of Seated Woman with Raised Arm to be produced in bronze with a similar scratched and weathered surface texture. In 1965, two casts were produced at Roman Bronze Works, including the present work at the behest of Nelson Rockefeller. In the mid-1980s, a third bronze of the model was cast at Bedi-Makky and exhibited in the garden of the residence of the U.S. Ambassador in London as part of the Department of State's Art in Embassies program.