Sold at Auction: Naoum Aronson

Naum Aronson Lvovich (1872-1943) was born on December 25, 1872, in a traditional religious family of ten children in Kreslavka, a village near Vitebsk in Bearus, then part of the Russian empire, now part of the Republic of Latvia.

Sculpting from an early age as a self-made sculptor, Naum left Home at 16 years old. He enrolled at the art drawing school of Ivan Trutnev in Vilna. He came back home after 10 months because of anti-Semitism expressed by the director of the program. He stayed two years and decided to move to Paris. Naum moved to Paris in 1891 to attend the school of Decorative Arts. In his diaries Naum said “I arrived in Paris without any knowledge of the language..,but with great energy and hopes that I would not die of Hunger”[ii]. He also attended the studio of Professor H. Lemaire and the Colarossi Studio. Aronson had always been acutely aware of people’s facial expressions “I can see the men, my grandfather and father with their clear faces that had shed their everyday masks.” (Glants, p. 11) In 1894, Aronson return to Russia to do his military service. Two years later he was back in Paris and Naum picked up his career where he had left it.