Head of a Man

Maurice Sterne (1878-1957)
20th century, Bronze

Maurice Sterne was a Lithuanian draughtsman, illustrator, painter, and sculptor who emigrated for religious and political reasons to the United States at a very young age after the death of his father, a rabbi. He at first undertook humble work, then obtained a job as an assistant at a map printer's shop, which excited him and prompted him to continue the painting studies he had begun in Moscow. He was in Paris in 1904, where he met and frequented Gertrude Stein; through her he got to know Picasso, Matisse, and the great art dealer Ambrose Vollard. Three years later, his interest in sculpture took him to Greece, a country he left to travel to Italy, to Rome, where he was influenced by the Renaissance masters. Between 1910 and 1911, he visited India, Burma, Java, and Bali, where he stayed from 1912 to 1914, producing over two thousand paintings and drawings inspired by the local inhabitants. Sterne's work, which had previously been essentially based on academic drawing, became more varied and was enriched by his travels and his knowledge of the Orient, and his style was transformed in the 1920s and 1930s showing a prevailing enthusiasm for pure lines and stylised forms.