Mother and Child II

Among the most poignant works of the Lithuanian Jacques Lipchitz is the sculpture Mother and Child II, made by the artist shortly after he arrived in New York in 1941, after fleeing Nazi-occupied France due to his Jewish origins.
The artwork depicts a naked woman without her lower limbs and hands, her child ground around her neck, her head raised in a desperate cry, and her arms wide open to heaven. Her appearance is not entirely realistic. Her arms are larger than the rest of her body, and she lacks other details on her face except for the nostrils and lips. In the face of her son, clinging to her, it is impossible to distinguish even the somatic characteristics of his face.
Even though its original conception was based on an episode that the artist had experienced several years earlier, this sculpture is a denunciation of the horrors of World War II. In fact, an early drawing dates back to the late 1930s, which Lipchitz attributes to an incident that occurred at a Moscow railway station in 1935. On a dark and rainy night, the sculptor heard a lamenting chant, and looking for its origin he found himself in front of a leg-less beggar, on a cart, singing a melancholic song. His hair was long and loose, and his arms were stretched out.