Jo Davidson, internationally known American Jewish sculptor, who recently visited Israel and completed plaster casts there of busts of President Chaim Weizmann and members of the Israel Cabinet, died in Paris last night following a heart attack. He was 68 years old.
Born in a poor Jewish family in New York’s lower East Side, Davidson became interested in drawing when he was a boy, but his family had no funds to provide art training for him. At the age of 16 he won a scholarship at the Art Students League in New York. After studying art for three years, he became dissatisfied and entered Yale University to study medicine there. Later he noticed at the Yale School of Fine Arts that some students were modeling clay. He tried his skill at the art and became so interested in it that he quit medicine and went back to art.
No other sculptor has ever made portrait busts of so many famous men of his time as Mr. Davidson. He liked to refer to himself as a “plastic historian.” Among his sitters were President Woodrow Wilson, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marshal Foch, Anatole France, George Bernard Shaw, Benito Mussolini, John D. Rockefeller, Israel Zangwill, General Pershing, George Clemenceau and Mahatma Gandi.
During his recent visit to Israel he did the busts of Premier David Ben Gurion, Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, Acting President Josef Sprinzak, Minister of Labor Golda Myerson, Minister of Communications Dov Joseph. He and his wife intended to return to Israel next month.
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