Coty Award Plaque

Created C. 1943, award presented in 1965 to Gertrude Seperack for her design work in the fashion induustry.
The bronze portion measures 14 x 8.5 inches.
The Coty American Fashion Critics' Awards (awarded 1943–1984) were created in 1942 by the cosmetics and perfume company Coty to promote and celebrate American fashion, and encourage design during the Second World War.[1][2] In 1985, the Coty Awards were discontinued with the last presentation of the awards in September 1984;[3][4] the CFDA Awards fulfill a similar role. It was casually referred to as "fashion's Oscars" because it once held great importance within the fashion industry and the award ceremonies were glitzy galas.[5]

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.

She studied with Herbert Adams and Gutzon Borglum in New 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.

Source:
Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, American Women Artists