Sioux Man / Malvina Hoffman

Gallery Label

This is one of 104 life-size sculptures (27 full figures, 27 busts, 50 heads) created for New Yorker Malvina Hoffman’s Races of Mankind for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Her best known commission, Races of Mankind broke attendance records its first year, 1933, with two million visitors. That year small bronze versions such as this, one-third life-size, were first sold in Paris and reviewed there by art critics. By early 1934 the small works were selling well at New York’s Grand Central Galleries.

From the exhibition:Frontier to Foundry: the Making of Small Bronze Sculpture in the Gilcrease Collection, December 2014 - March 2015.
Ann Boulton Young, Associate Conservator for the Gilcrease Museum, 2014.

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Art Item Information

©Gilcrease Museum

Title(s):

Sioux Man

Creator(s):

Malvina Hoffman (Artist)

Alexis Rudier Fondeur, Paris (Foundry)

Culture:

American

Date:

modeled 1930; sand cast between 1933 and 1941

Materials/Techniques:

sand cast in bronze

Classification:

Sculpture

Object Type:

Bronze Sculpture

Accession No:

08.56

Previous Number(s):

0827.56; 38161

Department:

Art

Not On View

Dimensions

Overall:

Height: 8 1/4in. (21.0cm)
Width: 5 1/4in. (13.3cm)
Depth: 4in. (10.2cm)

About the Creator(s)

From Gilcrease Museum:

Creator:

Malvina Hoffman

Biography:

Hoffman had trained with the French sculptor, Auguste Rodin, and in 1910 first met Rodin’s founder, Eugene Rudier, who used the foundry mark of his father, Alexis. Hoffman had hired a foundry worker to help her cast 27 sculptures in lost wax in her Paris studio fireplace in the early 1920s but like Rodin seemed to prefer the high quality sand casting done by her great friend Rudier. She wrote that he visited her at home in Paris almost every evening to report on progress at the foundry where 60 workers were casting sculpture for Races of Mankind.

From the exhibition:Frontier to Foundry: the Making of Small Bronze Sculpture in the Gilcrease Collection, December 2014 - March 2015.
Ann Boulton Young, Associate Conservator for the Gilcrease Museum, 2014.

Role(s):

Artist

From Getty's Union List of Artist Names:

Names (all):

Hoffman, Malvina

Birth Date:

1885

Death Date:

1966

Nationalities:

American (North American)

Roles:

American sculptor, 1885-1966

Gender:

female

Events:

active (professional function)

Note:

Comment on works: sculptor

From Gilcrease Museum:

Creator:

Alexis Rudier Fondeur, Paris

Role(s):

Foundry

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Gilcrease Museum

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