GASTON LACHAISE | FLYING FIGURE OF WOMAN (FLOATING FIGURE)

Lachaise Foundation, Boston

(with) Felix Landau Gallery, Los Angeles

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1969

A. E. Gallatin, Gaston Lachaise, New York 1924, p. 53 (another example)

Museum of Modern Art, Gaston Lachaise: Retrospective Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, New York 1935, p. 25, no. 27 (another example)

Buchholz Gallery, American Sculpture in Our Time, exhibition catalogue, New York 1943, n.p., no. 28 (another example)

Detroit Institute of Arts, Origins of Modern Sculpture, exhibition catalogue, Detroit 1946, pp. 6, 9 (another example)

M. Knoedler & Co. (New York, N.Y.), Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935, exhibition catalogue, New York 1947, p. 16, no. 16 (another example illustrated)

Detroit Institute of Arts, Modern Sculpture: A Picture Book of Modern Sculpture in the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit 1950, pp. 22, 23, 44 (another example illustrated)

Los Angeles County Museum, Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935: Sculpture and Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles 1963, n.p., no. 48 (another example illustrated); n.p., no. 63 (Floating Figure illustrated)

H. Kramer, The Sculpture of Gaston Lachaise, New York 1967, p. 48, no. 33 (an example illustrated)

D. B. Goodall, Gaston Lachaise, Sculptor, PhD dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1969, vol. 1, pp. 136, 201, 212, 232, 250n. 45, 397, 464, 474, 476, 477-81, 546n. 71, 549nn. 91 and 93-94, 550n. 95; vol. 2, pp. 209-12, 422, plates XCVIII, XCIX (other examples illustrated)

G. Nordland, Gaston Lachaise: The Man and His Work, New York 1974, pp. 130, 131, fig. 67 (another example illustrated)

P. Viladas, "A Life in Pictures," House & Garden, vol. 161, no. 4, April 1989, p. 159 (another example illustrated)

S. Hunter, Lachaise, New York 1993, pp. 32, 96-97, 242 (another example illustrated)

V. Budny, "Gaston Lachaise’s American Venus: The Genesis and Evolution of Elevation," The American Art Journal, vols. 34-35 (2003-2004), pp. 117, 118 (caption to fig. 46), 124, 141-42n. 144, fig. 45 (another example illustrated)

J. Day, J. Stenger, K. Eremin, N. Khandekar, and V. Budny, Gaston Lachaise: Characteristics of His Bronze Sculpture, Cambridge, Mass. 2012, frontispiece, pp. 13, 30, 33, 38, 40, 41, 45, 51, 61, 67, fig. 30 (another example illustrated)

Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College, SUNY, When Modern Was Contemporary: The Roy R. Neuberger Collection, catalogue entry by K. E. Silver, exhibition catalogue, Purchase, N.Y. 2014, pp. 134-37, 238 (other examples illustrated)

Gaston Lachaise’s Flying Figure of Woman (Floating Figure), a quasi-geometrical representation of a celestial goddess known in three versions in which the arms were cut down in stages, was initially reworked in 1924 from a broken plaster model of Home (Figure), an informal portrait of the artist’s wife created in about 1919; exhibited in New York in 1920 and 1921; and illustrated in the February 1920 issue of The Dial. Working with the broken model of Home freed and stimulated Lachaise’s imagination, and in turn Flying Figure of Woman--his original title for the reconstituted statuette--served as the point of departure for his renowned Floating Figure, nearly 52 inches in height, modeled in 1927 and cast in bronze in 1934-35 (Museum of Modern Art, New York City).

The only bronze cast of Flying Figure of Woman made during Lachaise’s lifetime was first exhibited in his 1935 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, and is now owned by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. It is the only cast of the second version of the work; subsequent casts are of the third version. With the authorization of his widow, five casts were made in 1944 and 1946 by the Modern Art Foundry, New York City; they include those in the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College, SUNY.

The Lachaise Foundation, established in 1963 to administer the artist’s estate and now located in New York City, issued an edition of six numbered casts by the end of the 1960s--the first was mistakenly numbered 1/4, and all have been sold--as well as its own artist’s proof in 2012. All seven were produced by the Modern Art Foundry. The Foundation owns the plaster model of the third version of the work, and has assigned the identification number LF 48 to all three versions.