Elie Nadelman (1882-1946), the Polish-American sculptor and graphic artist, evolved a highly distinctive sculptural style by abstracting human forms and stressing the curvilinear interplay of contours.

Elie Nadelman, born in Warsaw, was the seventh child of cultivated parents who encouraged their children to take an interest in the arts and philosophy. His studies at the Art Academy in Warsaw were interrupted by a year of military service. He returned to Warsaw in 1901 and then went to Cracow, but he realized that art in his native land was provincial and that he must leave to learn.

The following year Nadelman went to Munich, where he saw the drawings of the English Art Nouveau illustrator Aubrey Beardsley. These highly stylized works undoubtedly influenced Nadelman. He responded to Beardsley's elegant patterning and curvilinear invention but rejected his eroticism and fin-de-siècle posturing. Nadelman was deeply impressed by the archaic Greek...