Elie Nadelman

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Elie Nadelman (February 20, 1882, Warsaw - December 28, 1946) was a Poland-born US sculptor.

Folk art, modern art, and Classical art all came together in the career of Elie Nadelman.

He spent 10 years in the Paris art scene at the beginning of the century -- an advocate of one of the formalist theories current at that time. He moved to the United States, married a wealthy heiress, and assembled a large, museum quality collection of folk sculpture. 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. He attempted to release large, inexpensive editions of his simple, classical, Tanagra-like small figures.

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