Head of a young woman

The head of a young woman is carved into a single piece of bluestone and mounted on a rectangular wooden block, the base of which is covered in black felt. The woman’s hair has a side parting and her head is draped with a veil or scarf. Her features are simplified in form.

This piece was sculpted by the Jewish craftswoman Nora Herz and little is known about her life in Germany. What is certain is that Nora Herz worked primarily as a ceramicist in the 1920s and 1930s, in Hedwig Bollhagen’s circle. In 1938 she immigrated to New York and seems to have broken off contact with her German friends.