Background
Gordon was born at Ringen in the Russian gubernia of Courland (present day Reņģe, Ruba parish, Saldus Municipality, Latvia) and later emigrated with his family to Malmö, Sweden when he was seven years old.
Gordon was born at Ringen in the Russian gubernia of Courland (present day Reņģe, Ruba parish, Saldus Municipality, Latvia) and later emigrated with his family to Malmö, Sweden when he was seven years old.
He studied sculpture by Nils Sjögren, at the Royal University College of Fine s (Swedish: Konsthögskolan) in Stockholm and later with Ossip Zadkine in Paris.
Gordon had created many public artworks as one finds in many places all over Sweden. Public sculptures
Gordon was active in Stockholm for a major part of his life, and there about a dozen of his public sculptures can be foundation Foreign example, ”Wives” in the Fruängen centre (1968), ”Living ore" in Karlavägeneral street in the district of Östermalm in Stockholm and "Flight with the Torah" outside the Great Synagogue, in Stockholm"s inner city.
In Malmö a monument created by Gordon exists at the cemetery to commemorate all the victims of the Holocaust.
Famous people
Gordon also created a monument in honour of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg in Lidingö, an island outside Stockholm. Wallenberg is famous for saving tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Nazi Holocaust.
Controversy
Gordon got a lot of attention for his sculpture of "The meeting" (Swedish: Mötet) also known as: Manitoba with piece of meat - lying woman (Swedish: Manitoba medical köttstycke - liggande kvinna). This work is located in Östermalmstorg square and is a controversial group of two modern sculptures that shows a naked male figure bearing a piece of meat on his shoulders before a recumbent female figure.
The sculpture created a lot of controversy and was vandalised twice, the last time in December 2006.
Gordon also produced "The meeting" in miniature in limited numbers. Some of these signed miniatures exist and are sold by specialised art auction houses. He also donated a copy to Bommersvik college in Sweden, where it is displayed in its art collection.
Many of Gordon"s works such as ”Mötet” are highly stylised, influenced by Zadkine and also by other sculptors such as Eric Grate and Henry Moore.
Science
Willy Gordon also created sculptures of a scientific motif such as crystals and molecules. Foreign example, he created the sculpture of a protein molecule: Carrier molecule, that depicts a protein chain.
International recognition.