Freud’s Sculptor: The Life and Works of Oscar Nemon

In 1931, a Jewish boy from Croatia, persuaded the reluctant Sigmund Freud to sit for him in Vienna. This young man was Oscar Nemon.

Daughter of Oscar Nemon and author of Finding Nemon (release date September 2018), Aurelia Young will tell the story of her father’s life.

The bust Nemon made of Freud in 1931 can be seen in the study at the Freud Museum. Freud was generous with his precious time and sat for Nemon a second time in 1936 for the statue which now stands at the junction of Fitzjohn’s Avenue and Belsize Lane, Hampstead. He would go on to sculpt many of Freud’s disciples, including Sandor Ferenczi, Princess Marie Bonaparte, Melanie Klein, Ernest Jones and Donald Winnicott.

Nemon lived in Vienna and Brussels before seeking refuge in England in the 1930s. Whilst in England, he sculpted the Queen, Winston Churchill and many other prominent politicians of the 20th-century.

“I attended a marvellous lecture by Aurelia Young on her late father, the sculptor Oscar Nemon, a genius who sculpted the crowned heads of Europe, Sigmund Freud and Winston Churchill.” – Matthew Parris, The Times