Malvina Hofflman (1887 – 1966)
Coty Award for Kenneth
Bronze on wood plaque
21 x 13 inches
Singed lower right
Comes with the 1961 event program
Kenneth Everette Battelle, known as Kenneth (1927 – 2013), was the world’s first celebrity hairdresser. Jacqueline Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Heburn were among his clients

Kenneth Everette Battelle more usually known as Kenneth (4/19/27 – 5/12/2013). Described as the world’s first celebrity hairdresser. Kenneth achieved international fame for creating Jacqueline Kennedy’s bouffant in 1961. He counted Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Heburn among his clients. In 1961 he became the first , and only, hairdresser to win a Coty Award. The Coty Award is designed by Malvina Hoffman.

The Coty Award was rescued from Mr. Kenneth’s Hair Salon after the May 16th 1990 fire at 19 East 54th Street . The plaque had fire damage, and has been completely restored.

The plaque comes with the 1961 Coty Awards Program featuring Kenneth.

BIO
Born in New York City, Malvina Hoffman was a portrait sculptor of pieces that expressed the fluid movement of dancers and lofty human values. She became especially noted for her hall-of-fame portraits including Paderewski, Pavlova, Wendell Wilkie and Katharine Cornell.

Many of her pieces she carved in stone, and some of them were enormous in scale including war monuments. Her masterpiece is considered to be The Races of Man, done in 1933, commissioned by the Marshall Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. It had one-hundred five separate pieces, cast in bronze, depicting people from diverse cultures.

She grew up in an art-oriented environment in Manhattan where her father was a pianist and music filled the house. She attended the Brearley School and took private art classes, first studying painting with John White Alexander.

Changing to sculpture, she did her first work in 1909, a portrait bust of her father who died that year leaving the family in financial straits. However, his portrait was accepted for the National Academy of Design’s annual exhibition and launched her career.

York and in Paris in 1910 with Auguste Rodin from whom she learned naturalism and whose doorstep she sat on until he agreed to see her. In Paris, she associated with numerous leading intellectuals including Gertrude Stein, Henri Matisse, and Anna Pavlova, and her bronze sculptures of Pavlova, Russian ballet star, won her much attention and many commissions.

Additional images and details are available from hello@HeliclineFineArt.com