Austrian-born sculptor Bruno Simon was interned in Australia during the Second World War and after release spent four years in the Citizens Military Force. His Chinese Girl (aka Head of a Girl) was created in Australia in 1946 and was one of two sculptures (the other, Head of a Boy (aka David) is also in the Ben Uri Collection) which made him a finalist for the 1948 Wynne Prize for art in New South Wales. Simon brought both of these artworks with him to England in 1949 and both were included in the three-artist show he held with Michel Kikoine and Zechariahu Erlichmann at Ben Uri in 1951. He also exhibited at at the Institut Francaise in London in 1955 and the Jewish Chronicle again commended him as ‘a quiet craftsman, modelling or carving directly or in the abstract according to the problem he is faced with’. His Head of a Girl was praised as a good example of his work and for his ‘sensitive direct modelling’, while his alabaster Dancer was said to freeze ‘abstract motion most tellingly'.