The Power of 35!

Herman Wald was born in 1906 in Cluj, Hungary. Growing to maturity in an increasingly anti-semitic Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, his restless journeys saw him moving from one artistic centre to another, successively studying in Budapest, Vienna, Berlin, and Paris. In 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, he left Paris for London. After four years of exposure to the artworks of British sculptors such as Henry Moore, Jacob Epstein and Frank Dobson, he emigrated to South Africa in 1937. Wald practiced as a full-time sculptor in Johannesburg until his death in 1970.

This sculpture was commissioned by the United Building Society in Johannesburg, Now at Absa in Main St Johannesburg. According to Wald, the artwork represents his vision for a future South Africa. Three men are represented joining their arms in communal effort and working together in unity. As Wald put it, “one with the face of a European, the second that of an African and the third the face of a man of mixed race origin”; the use of emphatically varied facial feature types was a strong plea for unity and equality for all South Africans.