Abraham Walkowitz

Dance and dancers are common motifs in American art in the early 1900s. Modern dance—sometimes called improvisational or free dance—began to take form in the US and Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. An early leader in the genre was Isadora Duncan, rendered here balancing on one foot, with her other knee raised. Like in modernism more generally, modern dance rejected previous traditions, in this case forms such as ballet, and was inspired by expressions from non-Western cultures, including Africa. Between this watercolor by Abraham Walkowitz and Esther Pressoir’s Dancer nearby, we can see how modernist dance and African diasporic culture were in dialogue with and an influence on modernist painting and drawing.

–Conor Moynihan, assistant curator of prints, drawings, and photographs