1. Malvina Cornell Hoffman was an American sculptor and author, well known for her life-size bronze sculptures of people.
46 Facts About Malvina Hoffman
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Malvina Hoffman was particularly known for her sculptures of dancers, such as Anna Pavlova.
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Malvina Hoffman's sculpture series of culturally diverse people, entitled Hall of the Races of Mankind, was a popular permanent exhibition at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
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Malvina Hoffman was commissioned to execute commemorative monuments and was awarded many prizes and honors, including a membership to the National Sculpture Society.
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Malvina Hoffman maintained a salon, a social gathering of artistic and personal acquaintances, at her Sniffen Court studio for many years.
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Malvina Hoffman was highly skilled in foundry techniques, often casting her own works.
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Malvina Hoffman published a definitive work on historical and technical aspects of bronze casting, Sculpture Inside and Out, in 1939.
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Malvina Hoffman was born in New York City, the fourth of six children of the concert pianist and composer, Richard Hoffman, and Fidelia Marshall Hoffman.
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Malvina Hoffman was named after a maternal aunt, Malvina Helen Cornell, who would later survive the sinking of the RMS Titanic.
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The Malvina Hoffman's regularly entertained artists and musicians in their home.
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Malvina Hoffman attended Veltin School for Girls, Chapin, and Brearley private schools.
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Malvina Hoffman studied painting with John White Alexander in 1906, and with Harper Pennington.
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Malvina Hoffman developed her skill as an artist during her studies with George Grey Barnard, Herbert Adams, and Gutzon Borglum.
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Malvina Hoffman worked as an assistant to sculptor Alexander Phimister Proctor at his MacDougal Street studio in Greenwich Village in 1907.
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In 1908, Hoffman traveled to Paris with Katharine Rhoades and Marion H Beckett and studied art there.
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Malvina Hoffman gravitated towards sculpture due to the artistic freedom she felt when creating a three-dimensional work of art.
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Malvina Hoffman was inspired by the combination of motion and control exhibited by Mikhail Mordkin and Anna Pavlova.
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Malvina Hoffman worked as a studio assistant for Janet Scudder.
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Malvina Hoffman caught his attention when she quoted a poem that he attempted to remember by Alfred de Musset.
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Malvina Hoffman made a trip to Manhattan in 1912 to dissect bodies at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.
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The Malvina Hoffman women lived in Paris until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
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Malvina Hoffman became famous internationally for her sculptures of ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova, who often posed for her.
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Malvina Hoffman made a plaster bust, the last work she made of Pavlova, in 1923.
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Malvina Hoffman created friezes and other works that captured the movements of dancers.
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Malvina Hoffman helped to organize, and was the American representative, for the French war charity, Appui aux Artistes that assisted needy artists.
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Malvina Hoffman made a larger-than-life-sized work of Croatian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic, with whom she studied.
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Malvina Hoffman once said, "Hero worship formed a major part of my emotional life".
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Malvina Hoffman modeled for her sculpture of him entitled A Modern Crusader.
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Malvina Hoffman created the well known poster Serbia needs your help, based on the Miloje P Igrutinovic's photo of dead Serbian soldiers who had died of hunger and exhaustion on the Greek island of Vido.
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Malvina Hoffman published her impressions about her visit in the chapter "Hunger in the Balkans" of her book Heads and Tales.
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In 2018, an exhibition Who is Malvina Hoffman dedicated to her work was opened in Novi Sad, Serbia.
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The Malvina Hoffman exhibition, organized in cooperation with the US embassy in Belgrade, later toured the entire country.
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Malvina Hoffman welcomed Croatian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic, lending him her studio to work.
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In 1919, at the request of Herbert Hoover, director of American Relief Administration, Malvina Hoffman travelled to Serbia and Yugoslavia to visit US humanitarian missions throughout the state.
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Malvina Hoffman's counter-proposal was accepted, and she was commissioned by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois to create anthropologically accurate sculptures of peoples of diverse nationalities and races.
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Malvina Hoffman completed more than 105 sculptures, predominantly in bronze, but in marble and stone.
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Malvina Hoffman documented her travels for the commission in the book, Heads and Tales.
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Malvina Hoffman again supported Serbia, which was again occupied by Germany.
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In 1948, Malvina Hoffman created relief sculptures for the walls of the American World War II Memorial for the Epinal American Cemetery and Memorial in Vosges, France.
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Malvina Hoffman depicted the evolution of medicine in a 13-panel bas relief for Boston's Joslin Diabetes Center.
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Malvina Hoffman's works were exhibited often at the National Academy.
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Malvina Hoffman's work is kept in the permanent collections of many museums worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Vero Beach Museum of Art, the Harvard Art Museums, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Nasher Museum of Art, and the Gilcrease Museum.
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Malvina Hoffman was married to an Englishman, Samuel Bonarius Grimson, on June 4,1924.
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Malvina Hoffman befriended painter Romaine Brooks, writer Gertrude Stein, and ballet dancer Anna Pavlova.
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Malvina Hoffman held costume parties and balls in her studio, which were reported in the city's society pages.
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Malvina Hoffman often spent the summers in a Hartsdale cottage provided to her by Paul Warburg.