1941

Mother and Child II

American (born Lithuania), 1891 - 1973

This monumental sculpture depicts a legless woman with her arms raised in pitiful supplication and a child clinging desperately to her neck. Only after Lipchitz finished the work did he relate it to a scene he had witnessed during a 1935 visit to Moscow: "I was in Russia and one night, when it was dark and raining, I heard the sound of a pathetic song. I tried to trace it and came to a railroad station where there was a beggar woman, a cripple without legs, on a cart, who was singing, her hair all loose and her arms outstretched. I was terribly touched by this image."