Naoum Aronson

Naoum Aronson
Portrait of Naoum Aronson by Boris Kustodiev
Born	December 25, 1872 Krāslava, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	September 30, 1943 New York City, U.S.
Occupation	Sculptor
Spouse	Dr. Helene Aronson

Naoum Aronson (1872–1943) was a sculptor who lived for most of his life in Paris. He is known principally for his busts of important leaders, including Ludwig van Beethoven, Louis Pasteur, Leo Tolstoy, Grigori Rasputin, and Vladimir Lenin.

Aronson in 1940

Biography

Aronson was born to a Jewish family in Krāslava, in the Vitebsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Latvia) in 1872. He studied art at the Vilna Art School before moving to Paris, where he would live for 50 years. He maintained six galleries in Paris, but kept his prize pieces, including the bust of Rasputin, in his Montparnasse studio. After the German invasion of France in 1940, he was forced to flee the country. When he arrived in New York City as a refugee in March 1941 aboard the liner Serpa Pinto, he had little more than some photographs of the sculptures that he had left behind in France. He died two years later in his Upper West Side studio at the age of 71.

Selected works

• 
  Head of a Girl (c. 1904)
• 
  Beethoven (1905)
• 
  Ivan Panin, biblical numerologist (1916)
• 
  Friendship

External links

• ArtGiverny article with more biographical information and images of Aronson and his works, some of which are from the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum archives website has several photographs related to Aronson
• Russian Wikisource article (in Russian) with images of sculptures
• Russian Wikipedia article (in Russian) with more biographical information