Jo Davidson

Although he specialized in realistic, intense portrait busts, Davidson did not require his subjects to formally pose for him; rather, he observed and spoke with them.

Davidson was born in New York City, where he was educated before going to work in the atelier of American sculptor Hermon Atkins MacNeil.

In 1927 he was one of a dozen sculptors invited by the oilman E. W. Marland to compete for a commission for a Pioneer Woman statue in Ponca City.

Davidson served as chairman of the Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions (ICCASP), a leftist-liberal group that supported the policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his re-election.

PCA struggled during tensions of the Cold War, with its members under suspicion by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for leftist leanings.

Jo Davidson
Young American Artists of the Modern School , L. to R. Jo Davidson, Edward Steichen , Arthur B. Carles , John Marin ; back: Marsden Hartley , Laurence Fellows, c. 1911, Bates College Museum of Art
Jo Davidson's life-size sculpture of Gertrude Stein was created in Paris in 1923, and a bronze cast of it was made in 1991 for Bryant Park, Manhattan, New York City. Sculptor Jo Davidson (a Stein friend from her Paris years) wrote, "She somehow symbolized wisdom" and he depicted her as "a sort of modern Buddha ."
A bust of George W. Norris created by Jo Davidson in 1942 for the Nebraska Hall of Fame .
The bas-relief of Emma Goldman 's gravestone, Forest Home Cemetery , Forest Park, Illinois