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Danseuse is a plaster sculpture carved in a vertical format. The work represents a woman standing or dancing nude with a folded fan in her left hand and her right knee leaning on a vase. The sculpture, known from an early photograph, is executed in a highly Cubist syntax, in opposition to the softness and curvilinearity of Nabis, Symbolist or Art Nouveau forms.The figure, at first glance delicate, feminine, wearing a necklace, graceful with a classical allure, is constructed with a series of faceted planar forms that together form a tight cohesive structure. The head, with its stylish coiffure, and the models facial features are simply constructed with only a few surface planes juxtaposed at seemingly right angles. Even the vase, upon close examination, appears treated in geometric terms, its sphericity broken by an angular cut to the right, barely visible in the photograph.
The treatment of Csaky's Danseuse, as other works by the artist executed between 1910 and 1913, suggests, as Albert Elsen notes, that Csaky had looked not only at Picasso's earlier painting and sculpture, but also at African tribal masks whose exaggerated features and simplified design accommodated the need to be seen at a distance and to evoke strong feeling.Just as in Csaky's Groupe de femmes (1911–12), Danseuse already showed a new way of representing the human figure, an unwillingness to revert to classical, academic or traditional methods of representation. The complex angular syntax visible in Danseuse was born out of a growing sense of contemporary dynamism, out of rhythm, balance, harmony and out of the powerful geometric qualities of Egyptian art, African art, early Cycladic art, Gothic art, of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Auguste Rodin, Gustave Courbet, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat and Paul Cézanne, all of whom Csaky greatly admired.
Nabis Pierre Puvis de Chavannes Georges Seurat Gustave Courbet Paul Cézanne Cubist Groupe de femmes Art Nouveau Symbolist Paul Gauguin Albert Elsen Auguste Rodin sculpture