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Reducing Exercises
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
Fueled by the advertising industry and the increasing popularity of movies, the ideal standard for women’s bodies began to evolve during the early 20th century, fostering a preference for more curvaceous profiles with thinner waists. Bellows’s Reducing Exercises presents a woman dutifully engaged in changing her physique while her male companion sleeps . When he first exhibited the print, the artist provided an accompanying quip: “Gymnastics before retiring are supposed to reduce the flesh. The husband is contented with his figure.”
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineReducing Exercises, 1916. George Bellows (American, 1882–1925). Lithograph; image: 44.5 x 42.1 cm (17 1/2 x 16 9/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Leonard C. Hanna Jr., 1937.478
