Barbara Loftus

(b. 1946 London, England – Lives in Brighton, England)

Second generation German-Jewish émigrée

Painter and filmmaker Barbara Loftus was born to an Anglo-Irish Catholic Communist father and a German-Jewish mother in London, England in 1946. Her mother, Hildegard, who had fled Nazi Germany in 1939, was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust but revealed nothing of her past until she was in her 80s when her revelations compelled Loftus to undertake an artistic exploration of her family’s past and the lost world of her German-Jewish inheritance that is still ongoing. She cites a current theory that the second-generation, often the daughter, ‘carries the candle’ for such legacies. In this sequence of three works (part of a larger series), she has reconstructed the aura of the home life of the family she never knew. These artworks, centred on the ‘topography of home and location’, are meticulously realised, always rich in period detail, though often muted in palette, and executed on a monumental scale, detailing episodes from her relatives’ past.

Loftus’ solo exhibitions have been held at numerous locations including the Freud Museum, London (2011), Schöneburg Jugend Museum, Berlin (2013) and Ephraim Palais Stadtmuseum Museum, Berlin (2013-14). Her work is held in UK public collections including the Towner Eastbourne.

Her latest publication is Barbara Loftus: The Distanced Observer (2022), combining testimony, excavation and interpretation, with essays by art historian Dr. Deborah Schultz and Exile Studies specialist Prof. Lutz Winckler.

Barbara Loftus, The Grandparents’ Visit, 2020-2022

The Grandparents’ Visit fabricates a detailed interior typical of a comfortable, respectable, middle-class German household prior to the Second World War. The grandparents and granddaughter (the artist’s mother) all face outward as if posing for a photograph: they are well-dressed, but not ostentatiously so, although the grandfather’s handkerchief seems to have been arranged with a slight flourish and the granddaughter’s hair is dressed in a large bow which, together with her neat, matching dress suggests she has been suitably attired to receive visitors. A maid, shown in profile, busy with a minor task at the table, is less defined, a less tangible presence than the others, who are shown at leisure: the grandmother holding a pug across her lap; the grandchild showing a book, perhaps a little selfconsciously, to her grandfather.

In the background we see objects typical of such a household: china ornaments on a cabinet, a framed picture, an elaborate light fitting, and solid, comfortable seating, all indicative of and supporting the solid framework of these similarly comfortable and respectable lives.

The Grandparents Visit, 2020-2022

Oil on canvas

213 x 152 cm

The Artist’s Collection

© Barbara Loftus

Barbara Loftus, The Application, 2021

In this interior scene, the setting is ostensibly unchanged: we see a similarly comfortable room: a large table covered with a tablecloth, chairs with carved backs, a large, wooden, mirrored fireplace surround covered with framed photographs and numerous framed prints and drawings on the walls behind them. Nonetheless, the quiet intimacy of The Grandparents’ Visit has disappeared, replaced with an atmosphere of tension and anxiety as a middle-aged couple and a young man – presumably their son – contemplate the application of the title: the woman sits, chin in hand, studying several sheets of paper spread on the cloth before her, holding another tightly in her hand; the older man sits slightly back in his chair, looking out abstractedly, as though in exhaustion or disbelief; while the younger man stands with hands folded over the chairback, patiently looking on. We can only assume that this may be an application for a German passport (Deutsches Reich Reisepass), which would have been stamped on the first page with the red letter “J” to identify and isolate Jewish citizens, but would also be needed to gain vital passage out of Germany.

Confiscation, 2022

Barbara Loftus, Confiscation, 2022

Confiscation – photographed on the easel to show its size and scale – emphasises the monumentality of this suite of paintings: capturing and pinning down the domestic details of homes and lives similarly ostensibly solid yet fatally disrupted, dispossessed, scattered, and lost. It also refers back specifically to the first incident of her history that the artist’s mother shared with herwhat Barbara Loftus has called a ‘late-life unburdening to me of her formative years in pre-war Berlin’: when, a few days after Kristallnacht, two stormtroopers arrived at her grandmother’s house carrying a tea chest and demanded that she open the china cabinet, which they then emptied with care, removing each porcelain figure, wrapping it in tissue paper and laying it in the chest, before moving on to do the same with the family silver. We view this scene as though we are standing behind the table with the two women on either side, looking into the room beyond as the systematic looting and unravelling of the family’s life begins.