Rhona Stern Bronze Torso Signed

Bronze torso by the South Arfican artist Rhona Stern (1914-1998), signed with initials.

Rhona Stern, sculptor and writer, was born in 1914 in Johannesburg, enrolled for architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, but never completed her degree when she got married, started making sculptures (initially influenced by Giacometti), wrote novels published in London 1964 to 1969, the last being “Stop halfway and look at the view”, after which she stopped writing as her novels were placed under an embargo by the SA authorities as being too subversive.

Rhona Stern returned to sculpture, receiving numerous public and private portrait commissions; she was also part-time lecturer at the University of Pretoria. She made her bronzes by the lost-wax process (cire perdue).

Rhona is the only child of the internationally known photographer Leon Levson and his wife Roslyn Elkin from Lithuania. In her early 20s she was married to Maurice Wolk, a medical doctor and lawyer who died at an early age; their son Jonathan Wolk, an anaesthetist, lived in Johannesburg. Much later she married Stanley Stern, a stockbroker from Johannesburg. Rhona Stern died in her house at Jellicoe Ave in Johannesburg in 1998, where she had been living for 50 years.

Artist: Rhona Stern (1914-1998)

Period: 20th century