Jo Davidson

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Jo Davidson with the bust of Arthur Balfour in Israel, 1951

Jo Davidson , actually Joseph Davidson (born March 30, 1883 in New York , † January 2, 1952 in Tours , France ), was an American sculptor who created realistic sculptures of many well-known personalities from politics, science, art and literature.

Life

Jo Davidson was the son of Jacob S. Davidson and Haya Getzoff, both Russian Jewish immigrants . He began to study art in evening classes at the Art Students League of New York and continued his studies from 1902 at Yale University in New Haven , Connecticut , where he discovered his fondness for modeling in clay. In 1907 he moved to Paris and received further training at the École des Beaux-Arts . Before returning to the United States, he made friends with Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney , whom he portrayed and who promoted him as a patron.

In 1909 Davidson married Yvonne de Kerstrat and they had two sons. The couple lived mainly in Paris. In 1926 he acquired Becheron, a property near the city of Tours, which was to be his main place of work in the future, with the exception of the war years 1940–1945, when he stayed at Stone Court Farm in Lahaska, Pennsylvania . After the death of his wife Yvonne in 1934, he married his childhood friend Florence Gertrude Lucius in 1941.

plant

Sculpture by Gertrude Stein in Bryant Park , New York. Installed in 1992, based on a model by Jo Davidson, manufactured in Paris in 1923

In 1910 he had his first solo exhibition, which was followed by others in the US and worldwide. In 1913 he was an exhibiting artist on the legendary Armory Show in New York. In 1947, the American Academy of Arts and Letters in Manhattan showed a retrospective of nearly 200 works by Davidson. Since 2006, The Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery has had the permanent exhibition Jo Davidson: Biographer in Bronze with 14 of his works in terracotta and bronze.

Jo Davidson's realistic sculptures portray politicians like David Ben-Gurion , John D. Rockefeller , Franklin D. Roosevelt , Woodrow Wilson and Chaim Weizmann , scientists like Albert Einstein , writers like Joseph Conrad , Anatole France , James Joyce , Helen Keller and Gertrude Stein and the actor Charlie Chaplin .

Davidson was fascinated by the personalities, his portraits became an “obsession” for him: “I do my interviews in clay and bronze. I consider my portraitures as comments on people that sit for me ". ("I do my interviews in clay and bronze. I see my portraits as comments on the people who sit as models for me.")

In 1951 his autobiography Between Sittings was published by Dial Press, New York.

Political activity

In the 1940s, Davidson was not only involved in founding the Independent Voters Committee of the Arts and Sciences in 1944, which later became part of the Progressive Party . He also worked actively to save European Jews from persecution by the National Socialists and played an important role in the work of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, better known as the Bergson Group .

Memberships

Jo Davidson was accepted as an Associate Member ( ANA ) of the National Academy of Design in 1944 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters that same year .

literature

  • Armstrong, Craven et al., 220 Years of American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of Art & David R. Goodine, Publisher, NY 1976
  • Jo Davidson: Between Sittings , Dial Press, New York 1951; Davidson Press, 2007 reissue, ISBN 978-1-4067-5464-3 online

Web links and sources

Commons : Jo Davidson  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from: michenermuseum.org
  2. ↑ wymaninstitute.org ( Memento of May 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ): Letters They Wouldn't Publish , accessed on October 6, 2010
  3. ↑ nationalacademy.org: Past Academicians "D" / Davidson, Jo ANA 1944 ( Memento from January 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed June 19, 2015)
  4. ^ Members: Jo Davidson. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed February 25, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Davidson, Jo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Davidson, Joseph (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH new York
DATE OF DEATH 2nd January 1952
Place of death Tours , France