Malvina Hoffman’s life was primed to be peachy.

She was born in Brooklyn to a piano prodigy father who had all connections in the art world to make Malvina’s wishes come true. When Hoffman tried her hand at art as a young woman, she had the fortune of being tutored by Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore, who assured Hoffman and her parents that the girl had heaps of potential. At the beginning of the 20th century, artists of every discipline flocked to Paris, and following suit, Hoffman’s parents uprooted their life in the states so that their young daughter could study in Parisian style with the macdaddy of sculpture: Auguste Rodin. A slightly insane decision by the dedicated parents took a long time to come to fruition, and Hoffman had to put up with some creepy-old-man BS to boot. Hoffman was only granted a meeting with Rodin due to her persistence after requesting to see him five previous times. Rodin took a while to warm up to the idea of teaching Hoffman, but he eventually took her under his wing, and ended up making attempts to seduce the teenager (um, ew). The 71 year old Rodin apparently backed off and the pair maintained a platonic teacher-student relationship, with Hoffman well on her way to becoming an established artist in bohemian Paris.

Hoffman’s largest commissioned exhibition was for the Field Museum in Chicago, a museum of natural history rather than fine art. Hoffman used her studies in anatomy and knowledge from months of traveling the world to inform her sculptures of various tribal groups and societies.  Her masterpiece, the sculptures of Races of Mankind, continues to be a topic of contention (and testament to the United States’ racist history) because of the way people of color were separated from the “more civilized white race”. Nonetheless works like Martinique Woman were praised for their artistry and dignity of the subject portrayed.

Hoffman was married to a violinist for 12 years until the couple got divorced in 1936. Although the prima ballerina Anna Pavlova had already passed at the time of their divorce, some speculate that Hoffman’s marriage crumbled due to an affair during Hoffman and Pavlova’s intimate friendship. Hoffman spent years sculpting dancers with Pavlova often posing for her. Although it’s fun to speculate about spicy artist affairs, most accounts suggest that the pair were simply very good friends. Hooray for close female friendships!