The Fuller Building is a 40-story building at the corner of Madison Ave. and 57th St. It was built in 1929 by the Fuller Construction Company, an early developer of steel-skeleton skyscrapers. It is actually the second "Fuller Building;" the first is better known as the Flatiron Building. At the time of this building's construction, the area was the center of the New York art world, and so the lower twelve floors were designed with very high ceilings specifically for art galleries.
Above the main entrance is a limestone sculpture of two idealized construction workers towering over the cityscape they've built. It is the work of Elie Nadelman. Born in Warsaw in 1882, Nadelman was classically trained in Munich. He immigrated to America at the onset of World War I, settling in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, where he remained until his death. He married a wealthy heiress named Viola Flannery in 1920. He became fascinated with American folk art, incorporating it into his own work, and the couple began to collect American and European folk art, eventually accumulating a collection so large that they founded the Nadelman Museum of Folk and Peasant Art.
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| Nadelman, ca 1915, with bronze "Man In The Open Air" |
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| Elie and Viola Nadelman, ca. 1921 |
Unfortunately, after some initial years of success as an artist, his career went into decline, and after Viola's fortune was lost during the Great Depression, they were forced to sell their folk art collection to survive. In 1935, many of his artworks were destroyed by workmen remodeling his studio, and the remaining work was packed away and left to disintegrate. Nadelman fell further into isolation and depression, refusing to exhibit his work, and committed suicide in 1946.
After his death, a huge trove of work was discovered. He'd spent his years of seclusion making hundreds of small plaster figurines of little girls. He received a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1948, and another at the Whitney Museum in 2003, and some of his work remains in the collections of the Jewish Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Honolulu Museum of Art, and a few other collections. The bulk of his folk art collection is owned by the New York Historical Society, which toured the collection a few years ago.
Initial Pencil Sketch:
Ink Drawing:
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