Sculptor Herman Wald would have approved of the bold initiative, says his son Louis Wald who was only twelve years old when his father died, leaving a legacy of over 650 castings of his works but little money to sustain his family in Johannesburg.

Hungarian-born, Herman Wald the son of a Rabbi, challenged the Orthodox Jewish restriction against carved images of the human form. After studying,   doing apprenticeships and working in Budapest, Vienna, Berlin, Paris and London he moved to South Africa in 1937 to escape the persecutions of the Nazi era and established his studio in Johannesburg. 

The death of his mother and her family in a concentration camp during the Second World War motivated him to produce a series of public works which confirmed his standing in the Arts world. The first, entitled Symbol for Chaos and Hope, and known as Kria, is the rendering of garments and a symbol of Jewish mourning, originating from biblical days and still practiced today.

The figure represents the present day Jewish people in defiance of its enemies, yet with dignified hope and feet firmly planted on the ground  :   'I am here to stay on earth', which is the birthright of any man, Jew or any other race’, affirmed Herman Wald.

This work which stood at Sandringham Gardens in Johannesburg since 1957 is now a feature at the Cape Town exhibition and thereafter scheduled to have a permanent home at the new Holocaust Museum in Parktown, Johannesburg.

Herman Wald’s most recognised sculpture is the Monument to Martyred European Jewry, which stands in Johannesburg’s West Park Jewish Cemetery and was ceremoniously unveiled at a special service attended by thousands in May 1959. He and his wife Vera Wald are buried close to this work, which remains the site of the Holocaust Remembrance service each year.

The final decade of his life saw the completion of many large scale commissions.  Mining magnate Harry Oppenheimer commissioned two landmark memorials, The Diamond Diggers in Kimberly and The Stampede also known as the Impala Fountain in Johannesburg’s Main Street. United Building Society, now Absa, commissioned the three faces of South African integration, Unity is Strength, and Old Mutual ordered the imposing Protector for its Joubert Street offices.

Wald worked in many styles and media and addressed many themes. His work mostly involves the figure ranging from the representational to the abstract. He modelled mostly in clay, but also carved in wood and stone. His themes included love, suffering, erotica, the figure and human relationships. He did portraits, cinema and synagogue decorations as well as monuments and maquettes. Many of these diverse elements of his work will be on display at the exhibition.

Co-founder of the Jewish Museum in Cape Town and businessman, Robert Kaplan, regards Herman Wald as an important artist in the South African catalogue and believes this exhibition will reactivate his presence. 

‘The Art of Herman Wald’ follows a run of successful exhibitions at the museum that include painters Marc Chagall and Irma Stern, photojournalist David Goldblatt and recently cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro. Wald has a significant place in history. His work will be shown to great advantage both in the courtyard and within the museum, states Kaplan.

Admission Fees to the Museum and exhibition are :  Adults R 40, South African Pensioners and students R25, Children under 16 years of age free. Valid Identification Required. The Museum caters for group tours by prior arrangement.

For more information about the exhibition contact Natacha da Costa at the SA Jewish Museum, Cape Town 021 465 1546, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

STATEMENT BY CURATOR HAYDEN PROUD

(Hayden is also Senior Curator of Historical Paintings and Sculpture at Iziko South African National Gallery)

Herman Wald Exhibition at the SA Jewish Museum

Many South Africans, especially residents of Johannesburg, will be familiar with the work of the Jewish, Hungarian-born sculptor Herman Wald (1906-1970), even if they might not have ever heard of him. His iconic Impala Fountain, a memorial to Ernest Oppenheimer, is a popular monument of the Johannesburg CBD; his impressive Diamond Digger fountain in Kimberley is yet another. For Jewish Johannesburgers, Wald’s sculptural endeavours have long been a presence in their lives, with amongst others, his huge beaten copper wings made for the Ark of the Berea Shul and his Holocaust Memorial in the Westpark cemetery. While Wald’s reputation seems to rest on these public commissions, his many other smaller works in sculpture have been apparently forgotten, or at least neglected by the mainstream historians of South African art. Local sculpture has always been a neglected area of research and publication; a situation that has and is being remedied by a number of art historians such as Elizabeth Rankin.

The neglect of Wald’s work might have had much to do with the fact that he worked in a bewildering range of forms, styles and media, and that he was deemed an inconsistent “commercial” sculptor and not a “professional” one according to the usual criteria of having one’s work acquired by public art galleries, or attaining a teaching post in a tertiary fine arts institution. Wald’s work is not to be found in any South African public art collection, and he never taught formally. Yet he managed to establish a full-time career for himself as a sculptor in a difficult context for artists, and, from his Johannesburg studio, he played an important role as a mentor to other aspirant sculptors.

Wald’s work is diverse both stylistically and thematically, revealing his knowledge of, and exposure to a variety of modern movements and styles which he absorbed as a student in Budapest, Vienna, Berlin, Paris and London. His difficulty, perhaps, was adapting these influences and making compromises to suit the demands of commissions and works made for uncomprehending South African audiences and the patrons upon whom he depended for his livelihood between 1938 and his death in 1970. The son of a rabbi, and steeped in Jewish tradition, Wald sought patronage from the Johannesburg Jewish community and produced many works on Biblical and spiritual themes. Of interest is the challenge he took up as a sculptor in relation to the prohibition of the Second Commandment, and the reception of his work by Jewish audiences.

While Wald’s major public works have survived, much of his other work was either left in his studio, or sold, lost, and even destroyed over the years. However, largely thanks to the efforts of his late wife Vera, who documented his work and his career assiduously, there is a good record of what he achieved. The retrieval of Wald’s oeuvre has become a family mission; largely driven by his sons Louis and Michael. Louis, who established a successful computer software company in London, has set up a highly-detailed online database on his father’s work at http://www.hermanwald.com/. He has also been instrumental in working with Wits University in setting up two impressive casts of bronzes by Wald on their campus.

The impressive centre-piece which will greet visitors to the exhibition on Wald at the SA Jewish Museum will be his Wings of the Schechinah, which will be shown in the appropriate setting of the Old Shul in Cape Town’s Gardens. It has been decided to entitle the exhibition Wings of the Shechinah: The Sculptural Art of Herman Wald. Made of beaten metal, the Wings are a modern equivalent to the inspirational work of the ancient Jewish sculptors who made furnishings for the Ark of the Covenant and the Temple of Solomon. Embracing the Ark in which the Law is carried, as Wald himself said; “the aim is to give the impression that the message they carry is floating across the whole world”.