Ballerina in Movement

Signed B. Frodman-Cluzel St Petersburg
Numbered (2) and dated 09
Stamped Cire Perdue A A Hebrard

Bronze with dark brown and green patina, set on a marble plinth

Height 9.4″ (24 cm)

Conceived in 1909 and cast during the artist’s lifetime

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Boris Frödman-Cluzel was the son of the wealthy art dealers Oscar-Karl Fredmana and Natalia Klyuzel. He was born in Saint Petersburg in 1878, where he studied at the prestigious Technical High School. In 1898, he settled in Stockholm and pursued studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in the sculpture department before joining the Fine Arts School in Paris. Following the instructions of the close family friend Faberge, whom he modelled for, he moved to London in 1907 and started to work for several clients, including the royal family, who commissioned him to create a set of domestic animals for the Royal Sandringham Church. He also modelled a sculpture of Persimmon, King Edward VII’s most successful racehorse in 1908, which was purchased by the king.

Returning to Paris, he formed a relationship with the foundry Hébrard, which is well known for the superb quality of their lost-wax bronzes. This method later allowed the foundry to cast the posthumous editions of all the Degas sculptures.

Just before the opening of the Russian Ballets in June 1910, Frödman-Cluzel opened an exhibition at the Hébrard’s gallery on rue Royale that was entirely dedicated to dance. He showed a collection of delicate bronze sculptures of ballerinas that he had known in Saint Petersburg and Paris. The exhibition was a great success, and the sculptures of the ballerinas Zambelli and Schwartz were acquired by the Luxembourg Museum in Paris.

From 1911 to 1917, Frödman Cluzel worked and lived between Saint Petersburg and Moscow. During this time, he sculpted numerous ballerinas and dancers and was the first artist to sculpt the famous Anna Pavlova. In 1916, he did the sculptural decoration of the tomb of the actor K.A. Varlamov, situated in the Vovodievitchi’s cemetery in Saint-Petersburg. Frödman Cluzel settled in Paris in 1919, where he taught at the National School of Decorative Arts and exhibited at the Paris’ Salon. In 1924, he was awarded the rank of Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.

In 1929, the sculptor went to Cairo, where he became professor and then director of the sculpture department at the Fine Arts College of the King Fouad. He also founded the sculpture higher school of Cairo, where he taught for twelve years and established Cairo’s Fine Arts Gallery.

In 1935, he organised an exhibition entitled Sculpture in Cairo in which his celebrated sculpture The Fiancée of the Nile was bought by the Egyptian state and placed in Alexandria in the centre of the fountain of the Nozha Rosarium Park.

In 1959, he sculpted a bust of president Gamal Abdel Nasser, which was exhibited in Saint-Petersburg at the Theatre and Music Museum and later in London at the British Museum. Many of his sculptures are now in the Fine Arts Museum of Gezira collection in Egypt.

Frödman-Cluzel harboured a life-long appreciation for dance and ballet in particular. Dancer in Movement depicts a female dancer in an arabesque position, with her left leg elegantly extended out behind her as she balances en pointe on her right foot. The richly textured fabric of her tutu fans out around her waist in an opulent display of grace and poise. Frödman-Cluzel positioned the head of the dancer to be angled upwards towards the viewer, further emphasising her powerful physique and drawing attention to her finely muscled arms and delicate hands.

Numbered ‘2’ and dated to 1909, the conception of this work coincided with a development in the traditions and accessibility of ballet, with the opening of the Russian Ballet company in Paris. The Ballet Russes proved immensely popular, in part due to the publicity garnered by its director, Sergei Diaghilev. With artists such as Frödman-Cluzel exhibiting works of dancers, the appreciation for Russian ballet persisted and many dancers became world famous such as Anna Pavlova whom Frödman-Cluzel also sculpted. The sculpture of Anna Pavlova is currently on display at the St Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music whilst his work depicting the Russian dancer Adolph Bolm as the Warrior Chief in Polovtsian Dances in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Boris Frödman-Cluzel’s work is in the following museum collections:

The St Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The Royal Collection Trust, London