Gaston Lachaise

Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935) was a French-American sculptor, active in the early 20th century. A native of Paris he was most noted for his female nudes such as Standing Woman.

Biography

Gaston Lachaiseborn March 19, 1882, Paris, Francedied October 18, 1935, New York, New York, U.S.

French-born American sculptor known for his massively proportioned female nudes.Lachaise was the son of a cabinetmaker. At age 13 he entered a craft school, where he was trained in the decorative arts, and from 1898 to 1904 he studied sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts. He began his artistic career as a designer of Art Nouveau decorative objects for the French jeweler René Lalique. Having fallen in love with an American woman, Lachaise immigrated to the United States in 1906 and worked in Boston for H. H. Kitson, an academic sculptor of military monuments. In 1912 Lachaise went to New York City and worked as an assistant to the sculptor Paul Manship. Like Manship his work can be seen at Rockefeller Center.

Lachaise's most famous work, "Standing Woman" (1932), typifies the image that Lachaise worked and reworked: a voluptuous female nude with sinuous, tapered limbs. Lachaise was also known as a brilliant portraitist. He executed busts of famous artists and literary celebrities, such as John Marin, Marianne Moore, and E. E. Cummings. In 1935 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City held a retrospective exhibition of Lachaise's work, the first at that institution for any American sculptor.

The Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, Massachusetts), the Art Gallery of the University of Rochester (New York), the Brooklyn Museum of Art (New York City), the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Currier Museum of Art (New Hampshire), the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Harvard University Art Museums, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Indiana University Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Modern Art (New York City), the Nasher Sculpture Center (Dallas, Texas), the National Portrait Gallery (Washington D.C.), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Phillips Collection (Washington D.C.), Sheldon Museum of Art (Lincoln, Nebraska), the Smart Museum of Art (University of Chicago), the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.) and the Walker Art Center (Minnesota) are among the public collections holding works by Gaston Lachaise.