Anatomical Atlas.
Pages loose but complete, spine scotch-taped but leaves unharmed. Attached are wrappers from a different work. Laid into paper covers, titled in her hand "Anatomy. Dr. Geo. Winter. Please handle with care. M. Hoffman." with her distinctive name label pasted on.
Malvina Hoffman, 1887-1966, sometimes referred to as "the American Rodin" (with whom she studied), is among the foremost American sculptors working in the first half of the 20th century. She is best remembered for her series of sculptures depicting ethnic diversity, known as the "Races of Mankind," exhibited at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933 and on exhibit at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago until 1969 when it was dismantled in the midst of racial controversy. She also specialized in dancers--her bronze sculpture of Anna Pavlova won her early acclaim--and in monumental commemorative works, among them a memorial to the men of Harvard who died in WWI, and "The Struggle of Elemental Man," for Syracuse University. In 1910 Hoffman went to study in Paris with Rodin, with whom she formed a close friendship. When she returned to New York after the war, she took up the study of anatomy at the College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Hoffman may have acquired and annotated this 1898 edition of Handatlas der Anatomie des Menschens--of which she preserved only a portion of vol. 2 relating to regions of the body and musculature--while she was in Europe, and/or during her subsequent studies in New York. She has annotated 20 pages in pencil, 10 of which contain substantive notes. The front wrapper, whether of her own doing or as acquired, is from an unrelated contemporary work, Lehrbuch der Gynaekologischen Diagnostic, by Dr. Georg Winter. Hoffman in any case copied it as the title to the Atlas in supplying her own outer wraps.
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