Seated Woman with Upraised Arms - Gaston Lachaise Sculptures

Seated Woman with Upraised Arms – Monumental Bronze in the Spirit of Gaston Lachaise

This Seated Woman with Upraised Arms captures the essential dualities that permeate Gaston Lachaise Sculptures: mass and grace, stillness and dynamism, sensuality and transcendence. The figure sits upon a grounded base, her ample legs crossed beneath a voluminous torso, while both arms rise upward in a pose that suggests invocation, ecstasy, or ritual celebration. Though seated, she defies gravity. Her form is solid yet buoyant, expressive yet silent. This tension between the monumental and the ethereal places the work in clear dialogue with masterpieces like Gaston Lachaise Floating Woman, where the human body becomes not just subject but symbol.

Sculpting a New Reality in the Age of Change

Gaston Lachaise was born on March 19, 1882, in Paris, into a world defined by tradition and on the cusp of modernist revolution. He received his formal education at the École des Beaux-Arts, absorbing the classical teachings of the French sculptural canon. But Lachaise's imagination demanded a departure. In 1906, he emigrated to the United States, where his work would depart from Old World ideals and give birth to a new American modernism defined not by idealized form but by a profound reimagining of bodily presence. Through his radical focus on mass, femininity, and balance, Gaston Lachaise Artist established himself not only as a sculptor of physical bodies but as a builder of spiritual monuments.

Isabel as Muse, Goddess, and Earthmother

Throughout his life, Lachaise drew inspiration from Isabel Dutaud Nagle—his muse, lover, and wife. She was more than model; she was mythology. Through her presence, he articulated a sculptural language that refused classical restraint. Her physical form—full, commanding, fertile—became the visual grammar for his reinterpretation of womanhood. In this seated bronze, one can feel Isabel's echo in the roundness of the hips, the thrust of the chest, the assured tilt of the head. For Gaston Lachaise Artist, Isabel was not merely a woman; she was Woman—the archetype, the origin, the absolute.

Form Beyond the Ideal

In the early 20th century, few artists were brave enough to challenge the Greco-Roman ideal of beauty that dominated Western sculpture. Lachaise was not only a challenger but a revolutionary. His female figures are lush, muscular, rooted in reality and magnified by devotion. In this Seated Woman with Upraised Arms, there is no desire to slim, correct, or idealize. Her breasts are bold, her thighs generous, her arms expressive. She does not pose to please. She exists to proclaim. This philosophy permeates all Gaston Lachaise Sculptures—an insistence that the body is enough, and that volume is virtue.

Between Worship and Wildness

The upraised arms, so central to the gesture of this sculpture, invite interpretation. Are they raised in dance, in surrender, in spiritual invocation? They resist singular meaning. Instead, they activate space—drawing attention upward, opening the body outward. Her movement is circular, cosmic. Lachaise once said that he sought to give his sculptures a “living presence,” and here that life is undeniable. The composition suggests a figure who is both of this world and beyond it, echoing the buoyancy of Gaston Lachaise Floating Woman and the calm authority of Standing Woman. She is celebrant and shrine in one.

The Abstraction of Identity

Though the figure is undeniably female, she is not individualized. Her face is stylized, almost serene in its abstraction. There are no sharp lines, no frown or smile—only presence. Lachaise was not interested in portraiture. He sculpted archetypes. This is true of both Gaston Lachaise Man and woman. The male figure in his work is often slender, elongated, introspective—serving as a counterbalance to the commanding force of the female. In this seated figure, woman is not complement, but core. She is self-sufficient, anchored by her own gravity, her gestures open to all that surrounds her.

Bronze as Breath and Flesh

The sculpture’s surface is rich in patina and polish, alternating between warm reflectivity and subtle texture. This play of light across rounded bronze gives the figure an almost living warmth. In Gaston Lachaise Sculptures, the material is never inert—it is sensuous, breathing, reactive. The softness of her skin is imagined through the smooth curvature of form, while the structural base anchors her to earth, as if she were rising from it. The seated position belies a kinetic potential, as if she might lift from the plinth at any moment and resume a celestial dance.

A Signature of Monumental Intimacy

Signed G. Lachaise, this sculpture belongs to a lineage of modern masterpieces that speak of the sacred in the everyday body. Whether created in his lifetime or faithfully cast in his style, the signature carries the philosophical weight of a sculptor who viewed art not as ornament, but as declaration. This work is a celebration of Gaston Lachaise Art—its unapologetic fullness, its reverent sensuality, its capacity to elevate the human form to divine stature without the need for mythology, wings, or robes.

A New Shape for Eternity

Seated Woman with Upraised Arms is more than a bronze figure. It is a revelation of presence. A reminder that the body can speak without words, can pray without voice, can dance without leaving its base. In the legacy of Gaston Lachaise Sculptures, she is a continuation of the artist’s deepest belief—that the physical is not in opposition to the spiritual, but its very foundation. In her, weight becomes wonder. Mass becomes movement. Flesh becomes forever.

Height:  48 cm
Width:  28 cm
Depth:  17 cm
Weight: 5,1 kg
100% Bronze