By 1912 the Gordin family had moved to Tallinn, Estonia. It is clear that Gordine's approach to sculpture was considerably shaped by the example of the pre-First World War Noor Eesti (‘Young Estonia’) a group of artists who championed Art Nouveau in the country. She exhibited bronze sculptures in Tallinn in 1917, 1920 and 1921. In the autumn of 1924 she came to Paris to study a course in French civilisation, improving her knowledge of contemporary French sculptural practice. Then, surrounded by galleries and salons, she "instinctively felt a correlation between the rhythms of music and sculpture" and developed her sculptural vision. Gordin gallicised her surname by adding an "e" perhaps in an effort to make it sound more Russian and always denied or deflected suggestions that she was Jewish.