Malvina Hoffman

Place: New York

Born: 1885

Death: 1966

Biography:

Malvina Cornell Hoffman Hoffman. She was named after a maternal aunt, Malvina Helen (Lamson) Cornell, who would later survive the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Her mother, also a pianist, presided over her education at home until she was 10 years of age. The Hoffman's regularly entertained artists and musicians in their home. As a young girl, she met Swami Vivekananda when he lived and taught in New York City, and several of her later sculptures, like that of Sri Ramakrishna, are located at the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York.
Hoffman attended Veltin School for Girls, Chapin, and Brearley private schools. While at Brearley, she took evening classes at the Woman's School for Applied Design and the Art Students League of New York.
She studied painting with John White Alexander in 1906, and also with Harper Pennington. Hoffman developed her skill as an artist during her studies with George Grey Barnard, Herbert Adams, and Gutzon Borglum. She worked as an assistant to sculptor Alexander Phimister Proctor at his MacDougal Street studio in Greenwich Village in 1907. In 1908, Hoffman traveled to Paris with Katharine Rhoades and Marion H. Beckett and studied art there.
She made a bust of her father, her first finished sculpture, in 1909, two weeks prior to his death. It was exhibited at the National Academy the following year. Also in 1910, she won an honorable mention for a sculpture of her future husband, Samuel Grimson, at the Paris Salon. Hoffman gravitated towards sculpture due to the artistic freedom she felt when creating a three-dimensional work of art.
After her father's death in 1910, Hoffman moved to Europe with her mother. They first visited London, where they attended the ballet of Alexander Glazunov's Autumn Bacchanale. Hoffman was inspired by the combination of motion and control exhibited by Mikhail Mordkin and Anna Pavlova. Mother and daughter visited Italy before moving to Paris. She worked as a studio assistant for Janet Scudder. During the nights she studied at Académie Colarossi. She studied with Emanuele Rosales and after five unsuccessful attempts, she eventually was accepted as a student by Auguste Rodin. She caught his attention when she quoted a poem that he attempted to remember by Alfred de Musset. During their lessons, he advised her, "Do not be afraid of realism". She made a trip to Manhattan in 1912 to dissect bodies at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. From Rosales and Rodin, she learned about bronze casting, chasing, and finishing at foundries. The Hoffman women lived in Paris until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
Hoffman became famous internationally for her sculptures of ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova, who often posed for her. In 1911, she made Russian Dancers, which was exhibited that year at the National Academy and the following year at the Paris Salon. She made a plaster bust, the last work she made of Pavlova, in 1923. Hoffman also created friezes and other works that captured the movements of dancers. In 1912, she made Bacchanale Russe. In 1917, a version of it won the National Academy's Julia A. Shaw Memorial Prize and the next year a large casting of the sculpture was on display in Paris at the Luxembourg Gardens. She has been called "America's Rodin".
Hoffman helped to organize, and was the American representative, for the French war charity, Appui aux Artistes that assisted needy artists. She also organized the American-Yugoslav relief fund for children. While working for the Red Cross during World War I, Hoffman traveled to Yugoslavia. She made a larger-than-life-sized work of Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, with whom she studied.

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