Off we went to Paradise Land!
Two of our CROSCULPTURE team members, namely Dalibor Prančević and Daniel Zec, had the opportunity to visit the Studio and Archive of Oscar Nemon (Pleasant Land, Boars Hill, Oxford) from May 13-14, 2017. This was a great opportunity for disseminating information about the project and for getting acquainted with the space in which this great artist lived and worked.
Their stay in Nemon's studio was a great opportunity to talk about the sculptor's heritage and the possible modes of care and popularization of his work, both in Great Britain and in Croatia. They talked in more detail with the artist's daughter - Lady Aurelia Young as well as Alice Nemon-Stuart, his son Falcon's wife. Daniel also researched the archive material and the artist's library, while Dalibor found came across valuable information regarding the works of Ivan Meštrović in Great Britain.
Oscar Nemon
March 13, 1906 (Osijek, Croatia) - April 13, 1985 (Oxford)
„Thirty-two years after the sculptor Oscar Nemon's death in 1985, a permanent Studio Museum and Archive is opening within the leafy, secluded site of his former home on Boars Hill, near Oxford. Famous for his portraits of Churchill, Freud, Montgomery among others, and originally from Croatia, Nemon came to Britain as an émigré, and then Jewish refugee, in the 1930s. He lived and worked at Pleasant Land from the 1940s.
The Nemon Studio Museum hosts a recreation of his working studio, and a themed display which will change annually. The initial display focuses on his Brussels years, from 1925-39. Nemon created the portrait of Freud, now outside the Tavistock in Hampstead, during this period, and experimented with Constructivism.
The Nemon Studio is housed in an elegant, riveted oval metal structure, similar to the ex-Army huts which Nemon and his family lived in here until 1970. Originally made in the first half of the twentieth century as a prototype kit home, it was given to Nemon by Randolph Churchill and has stood at Pleasant Land since 1969.
The Nemon Archive is sited within the building of Pleasant Land — designed by Nemon. A dramatic, white modernist house, Pleasant Land rises out of the trees of its wild garden. The Archive displays and stores drawings and reliefs, as well as those works which do not form part of the annual themed exhibition.“
