Between 1919 and 1939, Paris experienced a cultural and intellectual boom. This blog will feature artists, writers, composers, musicians, and designers. Paris was at its cultural peak.
Born in what is now the Ukraine in 1888, Chana Orloff went to Paris in 1910 to study fashion, but chose art instead, and took sculpture classes in Montparnasse. Her preferred medium was wood, but she also worked with stone, marble, and bronze.
When the Nazis invaded Paris, Orloff, now a widow, fled to Switzerland with her son. After the war, Orloff returned to her house in Paris, to find it had been ransacked and all her sculptures destroyed.
Do you know if she came from Russia’s House of Orlov, a princely family? Though with a name like Chana, I assume she was Jewish, and therefore rather unlikely to be related to a princely family.
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I don’t believe so, Carrie-Anne. Her father was a farmer in a small Ukrainian village. Yes,she was Jewish.
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Well Martha, some of her works may have been destroyed, but her art lives on here in your blog. Great job!
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Thanks, ZD. Working our way through the alphabet!
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Invaders have this thing about destroying art, as if threatened by it. Shame.
Wonderful artist.
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Thanks, Silvia. We’re experiencing this destruction even today, in Syria.
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That is such a shame!
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How sad that her works were destroyed.
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