Another cast of this sculpture, numbered "1-3", sold at Christie's, New York, March 4, 2008, lot 130. The third and final cast of this bronze is in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
Provenance: Artist's estate, New York.
Though the majority of Walkowitz's œuvre are paintings and works on paper, the artist was also a sculptor. He likely received instruction in sculpture during his formal training in New York and Paris and supplemented his knowledge of the human form with anatomy classes at the Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York. In Paris, Walkowitz visited Auguste Rodin's (1840-1917) studio and may have been influenced by his work, though he placed great importance on portraying naturalized, non-idealized bodies, such as New York laborers. Walkowitz exhibited his early sculptures into the 1920s but was always known best as a painter.
Walkowitz's painting and drawing style of expressing the essence of the subject by using simplified, almost naive forms carried over into his sculpture. The present work recalls Oscar Bluemner's 1913 essay on Walkowitz in Camera Work. He wrote that Walkowitz, "can increase the vibration of strong charcoal-tones— say the motif of a muscular back— to a degree that one imagines a thunderstorm."
