Gaston Lachaise
(American/French, 1882–1935)
Biography
Gaston Lachaise was a French-born American artist known for his sculptures and drawings of the female form. Focusing on the voluptuous qualities of breasts, thighs, and buttocks, Lachaise achieved a modern equivalent to Paleolithic fertility idols, as seen in his Standing Woman (1932). Lachaise once expressed his artistic ambition to be, “the glorification of the human body, of the human spirit, with all that there is of daring, of magnificence, of significance.” Born on March 19, 1882 in Paris, France, Lachaise entered a decorative sculpture school at the age of 13, enrolling at the École des Beaux-Arts three years later. In 1902, the artist met his muse and future wife, an American woman named Isabel Nagle, he was immediately infatuated with her, both romantically and as a model for his sculptures. Driven to follow Nagle to her home in Boston, Lachaise left Paris in 1905, upon reaching America he found employment as an assistant to various sculptors. The couple married in 1917, moving to New York with his new bride, the artist fell in to a milieu of artists that included John Marin and Georgia O’Keefe. In 1935, Lachaise was the subject of the first retrospective The Museum of Modern Art had given to a living sculptor. He died the same year on October 18, 1935 in New York, NY. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., among others.
Gaston Lachaise Artworks
Gaston Lachaise
(438 results)
.jpg "Standing woman (dbl-sided)")
.jpg "Seal (Sea lion), 1921")
English (US)
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