Oscar Nemon (né Oskar Neumann) was born into a Jewish family in Osijek, Austria-Hungary (now Croatia) on 13 March 1906. In 1924 he moved to Vienna, hoping to study at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, but after being rejected, worked at his uncle’s bronze foundry. In 1925, Nemon moved to Brussels and studied sculpture at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, winning a gold medal. He remained in Brussels until 1938, visiting Vienna in 1931, where he sculpted Sigmund Freud. Soon afterwards he changed his surname to Némon (later using Nemon). In year, he held a solo exhibition at the Académie, exhibiting portrait heads of the Belgian establishment including Paul-Henri Spaak, King Albert I and Emile Vandervelde.
Due to rising anti-Semitism, Nemon fled Brussels in 1935, travelling between Belgium and England, until 1938, when he settled in London (he was naturalised in 1948). Most of the Osijek Jewish community perished during the Holocaust. In 1939, against the wishes of her family, Nemon married Patricia Villiers-Stuart, and they settled in the Oxford suburbs. Nemon continued to make busts and portraits throughout his career, working predominantly in clay, plaster and stone, with finished works cast in bronze. His portrait busts included John Rothenstein, Director of the Tate Gallery; Karl Parker, Keeper of the Department of Fine Art, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Max Beerbohm, essayist and caricaturist, and members of the British Royal Family including Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother; Earl Mountbatten of Burma; and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Nemon’s best known works are public statues of Winston Churchill, who named Nemon as his favourite sculptor; they are widely sited including at the House of Commons, London, and Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto. The Ashmolean Museum held a retrospective in 1982 and Nemon completed his last major work, a monumental memorial to the Royal Canadian Air Force in Toronto, in 1984.
Oscar Nemon died in Oxford, England on 13 April 1985. His works are in public collections including the Ashmolean Museum, the Ben Uri Collection, the British Museum, the Freud Museum, the Government Art Collection, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Palace of Westminster.
