Gudrun Eduards, "A survivor from Warsaw"
Signed Eduards on the wooden panel and numbered III/VIII. Relief, bronze. 50 x 42 cm.
Title and numbering.
The Artist's Family
Mexico, 1960. Another example exhibited.
The sculpture in a larger format is located at the Gothenburg Concert Hall.
Gudrun Eduards, "Ten Public Sculptures and One Installation", Visby, 2005. Mentioned on p. 7 ff. Illustrated p. 11.
"A Survivor from Warsaw" is inspired by Arnold Schönberg's six-minute-long protest music with the same title. The sculpture bears witness to human vulnerability, humiliation, and death in the worst atrocities of World War II; the extermination of people, in this case, the European Jews. ("Gudrun Eduards - Sculptures, drawings, collage 1", Stenkullen 1996.)
After being shown in Mexico City, Acapulco, Puebla and at Liljevalchs in Stockholm, the sculpture was displayed at the Gothenburg Concert Hall in connection with the centenary of Arnold Schönberg's birth. A group of audience members bought it and donated it to the concert hall in 1975.
Gudrun Eduards (1935-2022) was schooled in drawing and sculpture at Slöjdföreningens skola in Gothenburg in 1951 and in sculpture at the Los Angeles City College in Los Angeles, USA, from 1952 to 1955. Eduards then moved to Italy to study for the sculptor Marino Marini at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. She travelled to Guatemala and Mexico before returning to Sweden in 1964. Gudrun Eduards is represented by several public works, mainly in the city of Gothenburg on the Swedish west coast. These include 'Figures in Wind' in concrete and metal canvas from 1971, 'Skridskoseglaren' in painted concrete and the sculpture 'Vingslag' in bronze from 1994. In Stockholm there is the 'Finland Monument' in Värtahamnen, executed in cast iron, granite and concrete during 1984-1986.