Movement on Paper: The Work of Abraham Walkowitz 

“Isadora was my strongest weakness. She was like music. When she moved, it was like the sound of violins,” said Russian-American painter Abraham Walkowitz of his muse, modern dancer Isadora Duncan. From the 1910s until her untimely death in 1927, the artist produced thousands of illustrations of the dancer in motion. Fluid and gestural, the surveys—most often watercolor outlined in ink—are a significant documentation of not just Duncan, but of the modernist movement in art and culturally at large.  

Abraham Walkowitz’s Early Life and Work  

Born in 1880 in Tyumen, Siberia, Walkowitz immigrated to the Lower East Side of New York City in 1889, where he began studying art at the National Academy, Cooper Union, and Artists’ Institute. Walkowitz’s early work shows his technical ability, and his etchings from around 1900 share a sense of dignification, depicting solitude and introspection; a hooded craftsman’s focus lies on his work in The Potter, 1900, and a composition of barren tendrils invoke a sense of ominousness in Tree, 1900.  

Between 1900 and 1906, Walkowitz traveled for a series of artistic expeditions. He then landed in Paris, where he enrolled in the Académie Julian and crossed paths with the beau monde of Parisian artistic society, including Henri Rousseau, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, and Henri Matisse. Around this time, Walkowitz saw Isadora Duncan dance at Auguste Rodin’s studio and immediately became enthralled with her.   

Fauvist Inspirations  

At the turn of the century, an increasingly modernized world led to several contemporary “isms” proliferating in Europe’s artistic forefront. Classified by obscured form and emphasis on color, Impressionism and Fauvism best describe the stylistic inclinations of the milieu Walkowitz socialized within during his time in Paris. The impact of the French Impressionists and the spirit of Fauvism on Walkowitz became clear upon his return to America in 1907. His circa 1908 series of ink drawings, later published as a body of work titled Faces from the Ghetto, displays an unrefined glimpse into the neighborhood he called home in lower Manhattan.   

Departing from the stern academic studies of his early career, the series sees Walkowitz slouch towards a more bohemian, Impressionist style with haphazard brushstrokes and abstraction of the subject matter. Despite their moodiness, the works carry a sense of delicacy towards his sitters—the scribbled, wavering lines act as a mirror, testifying to the empathetic presence of the artist’s hand in the faces of his subjects.   

His later tour de force of works picturing Isadora Duncan embody the stylistic and cultural ideals of Fauvism—the style of les Fauves (the wild beasts). Bold, illustrative, and championing emotion over technical form, the works encapsulate Duncan’s dancing and the emerging ideology it expressed.  

Isadora Duncan: Modernism Personified   

“Everything must be undone,” wrote Isadora Duncan, the American-born dancer who ushered in an unprecedented depiction of liberated womanhood and art. Though her criticism was made to metaphorize the ubiquitous aesthetic of dance at the time, it also speaks to her radical practices of self-fashioning and, more broadly, the ideology of modernism that was becoming increasingly visualized in art.  

In an essay titled “From Event to Monument: Modernism, Feminism and Isadora Duncan,” historian Elizabeth Francis writes that “Duncan’s dances were events through which her viewers recognized themselves as modern,” which is perhaps the very epiphany that led Walkowitz to his devotional practice. Her performance garments of choice, diaphanous tunics not unlike Grecian peplos’, are visualized in Walkowitz’s paintings as sweeping bursts of color blanketing her untamed limbs. She danced with bare feet and went unhindered by the era’s pervasive corsetry tradition, summoning modernity and siphoning off liberation through her free-flowing movement.   

Walkowitz’s paintings come as close as any medium can to capturing Duncan by echoing her instinctual gesture. Rarely did Walkowitz paint her face, nor did he care much about precision or detail – the works were not meant to portray Duncan’s likeness, but to picture her as a representational figure for her movement.   

Looking Back  

In March of 1944, the exhibition One Hundred Artists and Walkowitz, which featured 89 paintings and 11 sculptures of Walkowitz by other artists, opened at the Brooklyn Museum. Harry Sternberg’s rendition of Walkowitz depicts him with floating figures of Duncan swarming his body, her limbs, and flowing garb imbricated with his own. This portrayal calls back to Walkowitz’s conviction that “no matter what or who an artist paints, the artist always reveals himself.”  

Despite Walkowitz’s importance as a pioneer of American Modernism, his name is relatively unknown compared to his contemporaries. However, this doesn’t detract from his stature. Walkowitz held a unique talent: his ability to truly capture the spirit with a brushstroke, whether it was that of the pensive rabbi or the revelatory dancer.