Sculptor, born in Warsaw, Poland. He studied at Warsaw Art Academy, left Poland in 1904, and settled in Paris. His drawings and sculptures after 1906 reveal a simplification of forms and stylization close to Cubism, but also show an affinity with antique sculpture. In 1914 he moved to the USA, taking a studio in New York City. There he produced a number of unusual painted figure sculptures in wood. He became a US citizen in 1927, and from the 1930s worked extensively in ceramics.
Folk art, modern art, and Classical art all came together in the career of Elie Nadelman. At the same time, his own style was at times Classical, at times decorative, and at times a new kind of sophisticated urban folk art.
Eventually, as his wealth vanished in the depression and his work failed to interest the art world, he became more peripheral to the collectors of Modernism, he did not take commissions other than portraits, his folk-art collection was sold to pay the bills, and he died in relative obscurity.
But his reputation has grown over the intervening years, and now his work appears in many major museums and surveys of American art history
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