In her autobiography, Heads and Tales, Hoffman recounted the genesis of Column of Life (pp.43-44):
I was kept waiting a long time for Rodin to arrive. I took two small bits of clay and rolled them absentmindedly into two pieces about five inches long. These I pressed together in my closed hand, and studying the result was amazed to find that the pressure of my fingers had clearly suggested the forms of two standing figures. I added the two heads and was tapping the base on the stone step to make it stand up, when Rodin appeared. He asked me what I was doing and I showed him the little group. "Just an accident," I said, "made while I was waiting for you."
After carefully examining it from all sides, he said very seriously, "There is more in this than you understand at present .... You will keep this, and model this group one-half life-size and cut it in marble-but before you do it, you must study for five years."
In 1912 the clay model was made into a seal five inches high and cast in bronze, with approximately 128 lifetime casts and five posthumous ones.
Following Rodin’s advice, Hoffman did not translate the idea of the lovers into a larger scale until about 1917, when she carved two marble examples (private collections). Bronzes of Column of Life were not produced until even later, and their casting history is somewhat complex. The dating of a single bronze cast by Cellini Bronze Works Company, Brooklyn (Art Institute of Chicago), is problematic; it may have been cast as early as 1928 although records in the Hoffman papers list it under 1937. This Cellini bronze is unique in its inclusion of a separately cast, forty-two-inch pedestal with oriental motifs: elaborate low reliefs of six centers of kundalini (chakras) connected by a serpentine form. Not until more than two decades later was another edition cast by Bedi-Rassy Art Foundry, Brooklyn. According to the artist’s account ledgers and foundry receipts, a plaster cast was made in 1959, probably from the marble sold that year to Huntington Hartford. The following year Bedi-Rassy cast a bronze, probably from the 1959 plaster, and it was sold (Glenbow Foundation, Calgary, Alberta, Canada). The foundry also produced a second cast three months before Hoffman’s death, the museum’s cast.
Column of Life exemplifies the strong influence of Rodin on Hoffman during her early years as a sculptor. Rodin created many marbles of lovers embracing, usually presenting the couples as if their bodies were melted together and they had just emerged from the roughly hewn block of stone. Hoffman treated her lovers in a similar manner, also modeling the surface in soft, flowing passages in a manner similar to the sketchy surfaces of Rodin’s sculptures. Such a handling intensified the sensual quality of the theme.
