Date: ca. 1914-1915

Dimensions: 11 1/2 x 15 x 2 in. (29.2 x 38.1 x 5.1 cm.)

Medium: carved wood relief on separate mount

Credit Line: The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Purchased with funds from the Art Collectors' Council, Kelvin Davis, Kelsey Hall, Marie and Barry Herlihy, Margery and Maurice Katz, Hannah and Russel Kully, the Connie Perkins Endowment, the Virginia Steele Scott Foundation, and Joan and David Traitel

Object Number: 2004.9

Label Text: Elie Nadelman carved Woman with Poodle shortly after settling in the United States following a 10-year stay in Paris; there, he was part of the avant-garde social circle of American expatriates Gertrude and Leo Stein, which included Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Woman with Poodle demonstrates Nadelman's debt to classical relief sculpture in its subject and in the stylized rendering of the bed, the women's hair, and the poodle's mane. However, the attenuated forms of his figures and the emphasis on the energetic curving lines of arms, legs, and linens are undeniably Modernist. Nadelman was born in Poland and studied sculpture in Paris from 1904 to 1914. One of his sculptures and twelve drawings were exhibited at the controversial 1913 Armory Show, and the influential American photographer and tastemaker Alfred Steiglitz asked Nadelman to write an article about his work. After Nadelman moved to New York, he became one of the leading Modernist sculptors in the United States.