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Back of a Nude Woman

Gaston Lachaise

American Art

This exuberant ink drawing conveys the powerful energy and voluptuous eroticism of the female nude—a favorite subject of the modernist sculptor Gaston Lachaise. Here he reduced the body to a flattened outline of sinuous curves, relying on the expressive quality of his line to animate the figure. Inspired by his wife and muse, Lachaise presented a new feminine ideal that endowed the classical Venus type with modernist forms and earthy sexuality.
MEDIUM Black ink on cream, medium-weight, slightly textured wove paper
DATES 1929
DIMENSIONS Sheet: 17 7/8 x 12 in. (45.4 x 30.5 cm)  (show scale)
SIGNATURE Inscribed in graphite, lower left: "To Carl Zigrosser / G. Lachaise / 1929"
COLLECTIONS American Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 38.183
CREDIT LINE Gift of Carl Zigrosser
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION Gaston Lachaise (American, born France, 1882-1935). Back of a Nude Woman, 1929. Black ink on cream, medium-weight, slightly textured wove paper, Sheet: 17 7/8 x 12 in. (45.4 x 30.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Carl Zigrosser, 38.183. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 38.183_PS2.jpg)
IMAGE overall, 38.183_PS2.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2010
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RIGHTS STATEMENT © Estate of Gaston Lachaise
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