In 1906, while visiting the studio of Auguste Rodin in Paris, Abraham Walkowitz first met Isadora Duncan, the most celebrated and innovative dancer of the era. This encounter marked the beginning of a relationship spanning the next three decades in which Walkowitz made a series of thousands of drawings of Duncan. She was credited as the inventor of modern dance, dressing in free-flowing costumes with her hair loose and her feet bare and using her solar plexus and torso as the impetus for her movements. Walkowitz sketched her quickly, trying to expose her directness and dynamism. His drawings of Duncan, or, as he called them, his “calling cards,” are some of the only authentic records left of her dancing, as she never agreed to be filmed.

Excerpt from

William Keyse Rudolph, DMA label copy, 2005.

• Brooklyn Museum, New York
  View more watercolors of Isadora Duncan by Abraham Walkowitz at the Brooklyn Museum.

• Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
  Learn more about the life and works of Abraham Walkowitz at the Reynolda House Museum.

• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
  Explore other works by Abraham Walkowitz at the Whitney.

• YouTube
  Watch this video to learn more about Isadora Duncan created by isadoraNOW.

• Smithsonian Archives of American Art
  Read an interview with Abraham Walkowitz from 1958.