EVA FISCHER (CROATIAN/ITALIAN, BORN 1920) PIAZZA DEL POPOLO, ROME • Oil on canvas • Signed and dated 'Eva Fischer / 52' (lower right); inscribed indistinctly (in pencil and pen on the reverse of the backing board) • Framed • 29 5/16' x 22 1/16' sight size • 34 4/9' x 27 1/6' frame size Footnotes: N.B. Born in Daruvar (then Yugoslavia), Eva Fischer graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Lyon just before the outbreak of World War II. During the war, Fischer's father - who was well-known Talmudist and the Chief Rabbi of her community - was deported by the Nazis along with many other members of Fischer's family, most of whom did not survive the war. Fischer herself, along with her mother and brother, were interned in the Vallengrande prison in Croatia and were later permitted transfer to Bologna. The outbreak of the Italian Civil War in 1943 spurred Fischer to adopt a false name and go undercover with her family. During this period she became involved with a Partito d'Azione, a Resistance movement against Nazi occupation. When the war ended, Fischer moved to Rome and became entrenched in the artistic scene there. At one point she met and spoke for a long while with Pablo Picasso, who greatly admired her work. After moving to Paris, she became a close acquaintance of Marc Chagall. The London gallery Lefevre Gallery - the same gallery that hosted Modigliani's final solo exhibition - exhibited Fischer's works in the 1960s. In the 1980s she became the first woman ever to exhibit at the Osaka Museum of Fine Arts in Japan. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing