Naturalism to Modernism.

Naturalistic sculpture was ascendant at the start of the 1920s. The heroic in scale and theme was exemplified by Daniel Chester French's Lincoln Memorial statue begun in 1922 and Henry Shrady's dynamic battle group for the Grant Memorial, seventeen years in progress and finished in 1922. Realistic portraiture (Malvina Hoffman's bronze Paderewski the Artist: Head in 1923, for example) began a shift to modernism with the simplified, expressionistic work of Jo Davidson (Gertrude Stein in 1920). Paul Manship's formal, decorative, elegantly simplified bronze figures (Dancer and Gazelles, 1916) defined the public concept of contemporary sculpture in the 1920s.

Lachaise.

French-born and -educated, emigre Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935), who worked as an assistant to Manship, continued as an independent sculptor in the Beaux Arts tradition (Dolphin Fountain, 1924) but with greater originality in his bronze female nudes of monumental proportions (Standing Woman, 1912—1927, and especially Floating Figure, 1927).

Zorach.

Lithuanian-born William...