Norman Mommens

Norman Mommens (born May 31, 1922 in Antwerp ; died February 8, 2000 in Presicce , Italy ) was a Belgian sculptor and draftsman.

Life

Norman Mommens was the son of a Flemish mechanical engineer and an Englishwoman. He studied with Hendrik Wijdeveld at the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten , but had to drop out after the outbreak of World War II and was hired as a slave laborer for two years during the German occupation of Belgium.

Mommens moved to England in 1949 to become a sculptor. He married Ursula Darwin , who was first married to the painter Julian Trevelyan and had a son. She was a daughter of Bernard Darwin and a maternal descendant of Josiah Wedgwood and made a career as a potter . They lived in Sussex in the affluent circumstances of the English middle class. Mommens had his first exhibitions and was commissioned by Leonard Woolf for the sculpture Goliath , which found a place in the garden of Monk's House in Rodmell . He also tried his hand at writing books for young people on Indian subjects and illustrated these books himself.

Goliath

Mommens first met journalist Patience Gray , who worked for the Observer , in 1958 . Gray had two grown up children from her relationship with Thomas Gray. Gray and Mommens left England in 1963 and moved to the Mediterranean, Gray named the whereabouts in the subtitle of their second book Honey From A Weed , which appeared in 1986: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia . In 1970 they moved from the sculptor town of Carrara in Tuscany to Apulia , where they bought an abandoned, smallholder property ("masserie") in Salve , without electricity and without water connection, which was named Spigolizzi . Mommens set up some of his works in the landscape adjacent to the house. Exhibitions for his sculptures were organized in London in 1975, in Matera in 1989 , in Casarano in 1986 and 1992, and in Cambridge in 1991 . In 1994 they entered into a civil marriage. Patience Gray's son Nicholas Gray moved into the house after them.

Works

• Dib-Dib and the Red Indians . With illustrations. London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1955
• Polutin and the red indians . With illustrations. London: Faber and Faber, 1957
• Zoe: a story of glory . With illustrations. London: Lion & Unicorn, 1959
• Fifofus and the Red Indians . With illustrations. New York: AS Barnes and Company, 1960
• Buffalo Child Long Lance : Long Lance the autobiography of a Blackfoot Indian Chief . Introduction Irvin S. Cobb . Illustrations by Norman Mommens. London: Abacus, 1976

Exhibition catalogs

• Exhibition of sculpture . Lewes , 1961
• A happening - The Subterranean Sun . London, 1964
• Norman Mommens: figures in stone and drawings from Spigolizzi . London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1975

literature

• Paul Levy: Patience Gray. Author of 'Plats du Jour' and 'Honey from a Weed' , The Independent, March 14, 2005
• Adam Federman: Fasting and Feasting: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray . 2017
• Patience Gray: Honey From A Weed , 1986 ISBN 1-903018-20-X
• Patience Gray: Ring Doves and Snakes . Illustrations by Norman Mommens. London: Macmillan, 1989 ISBN 0-333-48612-9

Web links

• Literature by and about Norman Mommens in the WorldCat bibliographic database
• Aldo Magagnino: Remembering Norman and Patience , at: the italiantranslator, Blog, April 8, 2017
• Martina Strazzari: L'eredità di Patience Gray e Norman Mommens nella masseria di Spigolizzi , February 11, 2019 (it). With photos from various photographers.