Uploaded July 2022 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
This spring, Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellow Sojourner Hunt curated the installation Form and Flow: The Figural Work of Abraham Walkowitz, on view on the Third Level of the Stent Family Wing. Here she discusses Walkowitz’s Rock and Bathers (1917).
From early cave paintings to feminist performance art, the human body has been used to explore identity, study anatomy, and record the human experience. Abraham Walkowitz was a master of conveying emotion through the human form. After immigrating to America from Russia as a child, he began his artistic training informally on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, encouraged by neighborhood artists. Later, as an art student, he perfected realistic renderings of human anatomy while studying at a hospital. Inspired by the work of modernist painters in Europe such as Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse, Walkowitz turned to the theme of the nude in natural settings as early as 1908, following his first visit to Paris, and continued with the subject over the course of thirty years. Rock and Bathers presents ambiguously gendered figures, standing, sitting, or lying in unnaturally rigid poses, bringing an eerie feeling to an otherwise idyllic swimming hole.
This is just one of more than eighteen thousand artworks in our collection, always here for you! Reserve tickets to the Museum today!
Visit the High Museum: high.org
This spring, Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellow Sojourner Hunt curated the installation Form and Flow: The Figural Work of Abraham Walkowitz, on view on the Third Level of the Stent Family Wing. Here she discusses Walkowitz’s Rock and Bathers (1917).
From early cave paintings to feminist performance art, the human body has been used to explore identity, study anatomy, and record the human experience. Abraham Walkowitz was a master of conveying emotion through the human form. After immigrating to America from Russia as a child, he began his artistic training informally on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, encouraged by neighborhood artists. Later, as an art student, he perfected realistic renderings of human anatomy while studying at a hospital. Inspired by the work of modernist painters in Europe such as Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse, Walkowitz turned to the theme of the nude in natural settings as early as 1908, following his first visit to Paris, and continued with the subject over the course of thirty years. Rock and Bathers presents ambiguously gendered figures, standing, sitting, or lying in unnaturally rigid poses, bringing an eerie feeling to an otherwise idyllic swimming hole.
This is just one of more than eighteen thousand artworks in our collection, always here for you! Reserve tickets to the Museum today!
Visit the High Museum: high.org
