Gaston Lachaise

Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935) was a French-born American sculptor known for his voluptuous, monumental bronze female nudes. Born in Paris, he trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts before following the woman who'd become his wife, Isabel Nagle, to America in 1906. She became his lifelong muse and the model for virtually all his figure work.

Lachaise's Standing Woman (1928-30), now at MoMA, distills the female form into powerful, swelling curves that manage to be both massive and buoyant. He also created portrait busts and contributed to architectural projects, including reliefs at Rockefeller Center. He died at 53, just as his most daring late work was pushing toward full abstraction. Our collection includes 3 works at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.