Art: Head-Hunter’s Return

The most famous of U.S. portrait sculptors, glowering, grey-bearded Jo Davidson —dubbed “the headhunter” by the late Will Rogers because he has sculped more famous heads than any of his contemporaries—last week returned to the U.S. from his latest hunting trip. Sponsored by Nelson Rockefeller’s committee for neighborly love, the trip had taken him through nine South American countries, where he had bagged portrait heads of nine Presidents and one ex-President (Venezuela’s Eleazar Lopez Contreras).

Working in Bogota (Colombia) and Quito (Ecuador), Sculptor Davidson did two of his jobs at altitudes of more than 8,000 feet. Growled he: “That is very close to God for a sculptor. I have never been so close before.”