Head in Profile

Polish-born Elie Nadelman created works that blend the formal refinement of modernism with the simplicity of folk art--which he avidly collected. Trained in Paris during the height of cubism, this prolific draftsman developed a style of figures at once geometrical and lyrical, made of curves and counter-curves, of which the present drawing--a gift of the artist's grand-daughter--is a characteristic example. It relates notably to a group of female heads in profile (often wearing a bun) that Nadelman drew during the summer of 1920 in a shorthand manner that has been described as his "flapper" style.