Reclining Nude

Elie Nadelman

c. 1917

A spare ink drawing of a reclining nude in which Nadelman pares the body to flowing, classical contours to explore a timeless, sculptural ideal.

Confident, economical pen strokes carve an elongated, flattened figure whose cross-hatched marks suggest volume while the wide expanse of blank paper makes the pose feel calm, monumental, and almost archetypal.

Made around 1917, the sheet shows Nadelman’s turn toward modernist simplification—melding classical sculpture and folk-inspired abstraction—to help redefine the language of the human figure in early American modernism.

Palette

Exhibitions

The Nude: Thirty 20th-Century Drawings

1970

Renoir's Reclining Nude

1956

American Drawings and Watercolors: A Selection from the Collection

1969

Elie Nadelman

1948