He lived in Paris from 1904 to 1914, closely involved with the avant-garde, exhibiting at the Société des Artistes Indépendants and at the Salon d'Automne from 1905 to 1908.

His first solo exhibition in 1909 at the Galerie Druet, Paris, revealed a large series of plaster and bronze classical female heads and full-length standing nudes and mannered Cubist drawings; the latter purchased by Leo Stein, who had brought Picasso to Nadelman's studio in 1908.

[6] Eventually, as his wealth vanished in the Depression and his work failed to interest the art world, he became more peripheral to the collectors of Modernism.

[citation needed] After his death, in Riverdale, on December 28, 1946, his sculpture "Man in the Open Air", was restored and reintroduced in a retrospective at MOMA, New York.

His reputation has grown since his death, and his work is in many major museums and surveys of American art history.