Sculptor who got inside heads of elite

1925-2016

NAOMI Jacobson, who has died in Johannesburg a week before her 91st birthday, was an internationally renowned sculptor who did the heads of Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu soon after Mandela’s release in 1990. She was the only artist granted time with Mandela to sculpt his head.

She preferred working “live” with her subjects. “One can take a photo, but working in clay or plaster in three dimensions is really to get to the inside of the person,” she said. “It also enables the artist to spend time with those they are portraying, learning all about them. One becomes a kind of psychologist.”

A diminutive (5ft 4 in old parlance) but formidable person with a large ego and strong presence, she confessed she was in awe of Mandela but found him warm, likeable and a perfect gentleman. She forged a particularly close and lasting friendship with Walter Sisulu while working on his head.

She did a 2.2m-high bronze statue of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko which Mandela unveiled in front of the city hall in East London in 1997 on the 20th anniversary of his death. It was commissioned by Biko’s friend, Donald Woods, who admired her work, and sponsored by the director of Cry Freedom, Richard Attenborough, and other celebrities.

She did a bronze of Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi who was a close friend in the 1970s and 1980s. He commissioned a statue of Zulu king Shaka which has pride of place in Ulundi.

She also did the head of Wits university palaeoanthropologist and anatomy professor Phillip Tobias. They became close friends when he worked on murder cases with her husband, a doctor. Tobias would go to Windhoek, where they were living, to analyse bones the bones of victims.

One of her more unnerving subjects was the author of Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton. She travelled to his home near Pietermaritzburg and did his head over three days. She said she found him “humourless” at first, and “arrogant”. But she was soon captivated by his “biting wit” and “really fine brain”.

He looked at the finished product for a while but was “very quiet and said nothing”. When she pressed him he said something was missing. What?, she asked. He placed his thumb on the head and said, “my wife’s thumb”.

Jacobson was born in Windhoek on June 1 1925. Her father, Israel Goldblatt, was an eminent advocate and campaigner for Namibian independence from South Africa. He was Swapo leader Sam Nujoma’s lawyer. She matriculated in Windhoek and studied at the Michaelis School of Art at the University of Cape Town, where she met Larry Jacobson, a medical student, whom she married in 1947. They moved to Johannesburg in 1973, but her heart was always in Namibia.

After relocating to Johannesburg her career took off thanks partly to the friendship of fellow artist Cecil Skotnes. She had one exhibition and sold all 14 of her Namibian ethnic heads. She never needed another. Commissions came in regularly.

She never did a family member. She tried to do her father and husband but smashed her attempts. She was too close to “get” them to her satisfaction, she said.

Jacobson is survived by her son David (an internationally renowned sculptor too) and daughter Janine. — Chris Barron