Malvina Cornell Hoffman

American, 1887 - 1966

Death-PlaceNew York, NY

Birth-PlaceNew York, NY

BiographyMalvina Cornell Hoffman (1885-1966)

Malvina Hoffman's interest in art was undoubtedly encouraged by her father, Richard Hoffman, a noted piano virtuoso. A native New Yorker, she studied in New York at the Woman's School of Applied Design, the Art Students League, and the Veltin School; among her teachers were the sculptors Herbert Adams and George Grey Barnard and the painters Harper Pennington and John White Alexander. She began sculpting in 1906 and during the next several years created allegorical works and portrait busts, including one of her father that she exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1909 to some acclaim.(1) Following her father's death that year, Hoffman and her mother went to Europe, where they spent several months in Italy before settling in Paris. There, Hoffman met Auguste Rodin, whose work she greatly admired. She studied under him until 1914
while working as a studio assistant for the expatriate American sculptor Janet Scudder.

Equally important for Hoffman's development was her friendship with the dancer Anna Pavlova; about 1910 she began producing sculptures based on dance. Her “Russian Dancers” (1910), which was shown at the Paris Salon in 1911, was the first of many such works. Others are “Bacchanale Russe” (1912; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and a bust of Pavlova (1923; New-York Historical Society). Following World War I, Hoffman settled in New York, where she eventually had a studio on Sniffen Court on East Thirty-sixth Street. There, she established a salon that was visited by her many friends in the arts, including Marianne Moore, Sir Osbert Sitwell, Teilhard de Chardin, Ruth Draper, and Wendell Wilkie.

In 1929 the first major exhibition of Hoffman's sculpture was held at the Grand Central Gallery in New York and the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago invited her to sculpt representatives of the various races of humanity. She spent most of 1931-32 traveling around the world seeking subjects for that project while continuing to produce other works, including portrait busts of the pianist Ignaze Paderewski, the sculptor Ivan Mestrovic, and the philanthropist Henry Clay Frick

Hoffman was a member of the National Sculpture Society. Besides sculpting, she wrote “Heads and Tales” (1936), an account of her travels for the Field Museum; “Sculpture Inside and Out” (1939), a historical and technical guide to sculpture; and Yesterday is Tomorrow (1965), her autobiography.

Description
In 1915 the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago formulated "plans for a hall to present to the public the biological problems of mankind." (2) While various financial and logistical complications delayed its completion, a bequest from Chauncey Keep, former member of the museum's board of trustees who died in 1929, allowed the museum to proceed with the project. With additional funds provided by Marshall Field, Stanley Field, and Mrs. Charles H. Schweppe, the museum commissioned 104 portraits, busts, heads, and figures from Malvina Hoffman.

Hoffman was given the commission because of the critical and popular success of a series of wooden and stone heads of ethnic types she had produced during and after a trip to Africa in 1926. (3) She was now asked by the Field Museum to "proceed to those lands where native races are at their purest, and there register in clay and finish in bronze the living lineaments of selected types." (4) She signed the contract for the project on February 18, 1930, and, with her husband, Samuel B. Grimson, serving as photographer and aide, spent most of 1931-32 traveling throughout the South Pacific, Japan, China, India, Malaysia, Australia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. (5)

The results of her efforts were unveiled in 1933 at the Field Museum's Hall of Man (officially called Chauncey Keep Memorial Hall), where they were seen by a large audience during the World's Columbian Exposition. (6) Casts of the figures were also exhibited in Paris at the Musée d'Ethnographie, Palais du Trocadéro, between July and November 1933, and in New York at the Grand Central Art Galleries in January and February 1934, after which they traveled around the United States for more than two years. (7) In 1936 Hoffman published her book “Heads and Tales”, in which she told the story of the commission and its outcome.

“Samoan Warrior” is one of twenty-seven busts Hoffman produced for the Field Museum, and, like most of those in the group, it is one-half life size. The subject is shown holding a typical Samoan war knife. The installation of Hoffman's works in the Field Museum's Hall of Man was dismantled in 1966 and the sculptures scattered throughout the complex.

DBD
Bibliography:
Janis Conner, “Malvina Hoffman” (1881-1966), exhib. cat. (New York: FAR Gallery, 1980); Janis C. Conner, “A Dancer in Relief: Works by Malvina Hoffman”, exhib. cat. (Yonkers, N.Y.: Hudson River Museum, 1984; May Brawley Hill, “The Woman Sculptor: Malvina Hoffman and Her Contemporaries”, exhib. cat. (New York: Berry-Hill Galleries, 1984); Linda Nochlin, "Malvina Hoffman: A Life in Sculpture," “Arts Magazine” 59 (November 1984): 106-10; Janis Conner and Joel Rosenkranz, “Rediscoveries in American Sculpture: Studio Works , 1893-1939” (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), pp. 53-62.Samoan Warrior (“Samoan Man”; “Samoan”, “Polynesia”; “Man from Samoa”, “Polynesia, South Sea Islands”), 1932
Bronze, 16 1/4 x 12 1/2 x 7 in. (41.3 x 31.8 x 17.8 cm)
Inscribed (verso, center): © M. HOFFMAN 1932; inscribed (verso, lower right): “Alexis Rudier./ Fondeur Paris”.
Charles F. Smith Fund (1950.1)

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