Funeral services will be held here tomorrow for Bernard Reder, world-famous Jewish sculptor, who died here last night at the ago of 66.
Born in Czernowitz, which was then under Austrian rule, he started drawing at the age of It was not until after World War II, during which he had served as a draftee in the Austrian Army, that he started serious artistic study, pursuing his work first in Prague, then back in Czernowitz. Where he carved cemetery monuments, later in Paris, In 1930, a gallery in Paris exhibited his “The Torso,” a female nude, subsequently acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
He came to the United States in 1943, after fleeing one European country after another ahead of the advancing Hitler forces. In 1961, the Whitney Museum here devoted three floors to the largest one-man show it had ever conducted. Leading art critics in this country and abroad were fulsome for many years in their praise of Mr. Reder’s work, and some of his sculptures are in the permanent collections of most prominent museums in this country and in Europe.
Mr. Reder became an American citizen in 1948. Among his many awards in recognition of his artistry were a $10,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, and one of $2,000 from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
John Canaday, art critic of the New York Times, praised the “obullience” of Mr. Reder’s bronzes and some of his other works for what he called examples of “the joy of energy affirming the worthwhileness of life.” Of another of Mr. Reder’s works, the critic wrote it exhibited “a next to incredible demonstration of carving.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
