Man and Woman is a particularly sensitive example of Cecilie Kleist's art, its finely worked surfaces and tenderly conceived figures displaying the delicacy and feeling for which her carvings are admired. The daughter of renowned Greenlandic artist Aron Kleist, Cecilie Kleist began carving sperm whale ivory at an early age, selling her work in local shops as early as 1966. Like her father, from whom she learned her craft, Kleist favoured figures carved in shallow relief, their surfaces softened by countless fine incisions that suggest the texture of fur. In contrast to the deep openings and elaborate interlocking forms favoured by many tupilak carvers, her sculptures possess a particular intimacy, with forms closely gathered and delicately defined. In 1975, she married a Dane and moved to Denmark, eventually abandoning carving before her untimely death at just 39.

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