Description:

VERY RARE JO DAVIDSON WWII SCULPTURE 1942. Comprising a large polychromed plaster figural grouping by American sculptor Jo Davidson (1883-1952) executed in 1942 and commemorating the June 1942 Massacre of citizens from the village of Lidice, ultimately resulting in 340 deaths. The sculpture was created the same year as a maquette for a future bronze which was never cast. It dramatically depicts five figures, two of whom lay lifeless on the ground, next to which stand a father and mother with distraught albeit resolute expressions and with a child clinging to the mother. The large and intense sculpture finely modeled in full round and the base inscribed "JO DAVIDSON 1942." Height 27 inches, width 28 inches, depth 25 inches.

Literature:
Between Sittings, an informal autobiography of Jo Davidson, The Dial Press, New York, 1951, where illustrated on page 279 and discussed by the artist on pages 332-333. Lot is accompanied by a copy of this book.

In his book, Davison discusses the offered lot: This was the year Hitler destroyed the town of Lidice in Czechoslovakia. Clifton Fadiman, of the Writers' War Board, asked me to do a group depicting the tragedy. The Writers' War Board had organized the "Lidice Lives" Committee to keep alive the memory of the village which Hitler had boasted would soon be forgotten. Clifton Fadiman's request was indeed a challenge. I did a group portraying a man of the village facing his Nazi executioners; a woman and child are by his side, and those already shot are on the ground. I tried to express in the group the defiant resignation of the victims of that atrocious massacre. For models, I used my gardener's son Vincent for the boy, my Florence for the woman, and Angelo my assistant for the living and the dead men. I had only three weeks to do the group in, but it was completed and cast in plaster in time for the scheduled showing at the Associated American Artists Galleries. (pages 332-333)

The Lidice massacre was the complete destruction of the village of Lidice, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, now the Czech Republic, in June 1942 on orders from Adolf Hitler and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. In reprisal for the assassination of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich in the late spring of 1942, all 173 men from the village who were over 15 years of age were executed on 10 June 1942. A further 11 men from the village who were not present at the time, were later arrested and executed soon afterwards, along with several others who were already under arrest. The 184 women and 88 children were deported to concentration camps; a few children who were considered racially suitable and thus eligible for Germanisation were handed over to SS families, and the rest were sent to the Che?mno extermination camp, where they were gassed. The Associated Press, quoting German radio transmissions which it received in New York, said: "All male grownups of the town were shot, while the women were placed in a concentration camp, and the children were entrusted to appropriate educational institutions." About 340 people from Lidice died because of the German reprisal (192 men, 60 women and 88 children) and after the war ended, only 53 women and 17 children returned.

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  • Condition: Important Notice: The absence of condition information in the description does not imply that the lot is in perfect condition, a condition report is available by request.

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July 14, 2021 9:00 AM CDT
Cedar Falls, IA, US

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