Standing Woman - Gaston Lachaise Sculptures - Bronze

Standing Woman – Modern Bronze Sculpture - Signed G. Lachaise

This Standing Woman bronze sculpture is one of the most iconic expressions of Lachaise’s revolutionary aesthetic. She stands boldly, hands lifted in an ambiguous gesture that blends poise and invocation. Her form is grand and unapologetic—voluptuous hips, broad shoulders, and strong limbs contrast with a serene, mask-like face that stares forward with timeless calm. She is not an allegory or a mythological figure. She is Woman, fully realized, commanding the space around her not through drama, but through sheer presence. Among all Gaston Lachaise Sculptures, this is perhaps the most complete visual statement of his core belief: that womanhood is the fundamental force of creation and divinity.

The Sculptor Who Redefined the Female Form

Gaston Lachaise was born on March 19, 1882, in Paris, a city steeped in classical traditions and yet vibrating with modernist energy. He studied at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, where he mastered traditional forms but quickly grew restless within their constraints. In 1906, he left France and emigrated to the United States—a move that would not only reshape his life but ultimately allow him to help shape American modernism. It was there that Gaston Lachaise Artist emerged as one of the most daring and original sculptors of the 20th century, transforming the human figure—particularly the female nude—into a monument of exalted sensuality and metaphysical presence.

The Signature of a Sculptural Revolutionary

This piece is signed G. Lachaise, a mark of lineage and legacy. While some bronzes are cast posthumously, the fidelity of form, surface, and proportion clearly reflects the master’s original vocabulary. The signature affirms its spiritual connection to the artist’s oeuvre, most notably to his career-defining Standing Woman first exhibited in 1932—a monumental bronze now held in major museum collections. It is a sculptural gesture so compelling that it inspired generations of artists to rethink proportion, power, and beauty in figurative sculpture. In the hands of Gaston Lachaise Artist, the female form becomes not object but origin.

A Body Anchored in the Real, Reaching into the Mythic

The polished bronze skin of this sculpture reflects light in soft planes and rounded shadows, giving her not only anatomical clarity but an almost otherworldly glow. Her body is not stylized for eroticism or adorned with symbolic drapery. She needs no mythology—she is mythology. Lachaise famously drew his inspiration from his wife and lifelong muse Isabel Dutaud Nagle, whose physical and spiritual energy infused his creative life. She was his goddess, and in every curvature of this Standing Woman, we feel that devotion. Like Gaston Lachaise Floating Woman, this sculpture channels his near-religious reverence for the female body—but here, grounded and upright, the woman becomes a pillar of human power.

A Radical Break from Classical Proportions

Where earlier traditions idealized the slender, restrained body, Gaston Lachaise Sculptures exploded that mold. His women are earth goddesses: massive, fertile, proud, and elevated. He once described his work as an attempt to create a “living presence,” not a representation. The proportions here—the enlarged hands, the powerful thighs, the expansive belly—are not distortions, but affirmations. They resist submission to classical standards and demand new ones. The woman stands as the equal opposite of Gaston Lachaise Man, who is often depicted smaller, more fragile, and subservient in Lachaise’s vision. Here, Woman is the cosmic center.

The Spiritual Dimension of Volume

Though grounded in physical form, this sculpture emanates spiritual energy. Its frontal stance and raised arms suggest ritual or offering. The facial features are softened into abstraction—not anonymous, but universal. There is no narrative, no motion, no symbolic accessory. She does not act—she is. In this stillness, Lachaise achieves transcendence. This is the essence of Gaston Lachaise Art: the body as altar, the form as force, the sculpture as a vessel for metaphysical encounter. Few artists have ever managed to imbue bronze with such dignity, sensuality, and immensity.

A Lasting Influence in Modern Sculpture

Lachaise died in 1935 at the age of 53, leaving behind a compact but astonishingly original body of work. His sculptures are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, and the Smithsonian. Though he never achieved the commercial fame of his contemporaries during his lifetime, his work has since become central to the canon of American modernism. Today, Gaston Lachaise Floating Woman and Standing Woman are recognized as among the most important achievements in 20th-century sculpture. This bronze pays homage to that legacy—not only preserving a visual language, but expanding its reach into the present.

The Body Made Monument

This Modern Art Sculpture – Standing Woman is more than a representation of femininity. It is an incarnation of Lachaise’s radical belief in the sacred power of the human body. It stands at the intersection of myth and modernity, of earth and aspiration, of weight and grace. In the tradition of Gaston Lachaise Sculptures, it continues to remind us that sculpture can still astonish, still provoke, and still praise the eternal feminine not in fragility—but in fullness, in strength, and in sublime stillness.

Height: 134 cm
Width: 62 cm
Depth: 44 cm
Weight: 40 kg
100% Bronze