Refugees is a rare, important early painting, thought lost for over 60 years. Herman destroyed the majority of work from this period in 1948, considering it too influenced by Chagall. Blue was the dominant colour of Herman’s Glasgow years, used as a nostalgic evocation of a lost Warsaw with its moonlit spires. Like much of Herman’s Glasgow work, this painting draws strongly on his eastern European Jewish heritage and themes. However the refugees also represent the wider displacement of peoples uprooted and forced into exile by the upheavals of the Second World War. The family’s unknown fate is symbolized by the cat with a mouse dangling from its jaw. The treatment of the figures reflects Herman’s admiration for Käthe Kollwitz, while the fearful child with her hand in her mouth is reminiscent of Goya.
Among other works from this early period are the sketch Musicians (c.1940–43) and a portrait drawing of the Yiddish poet, Avram Stencl. In 2011 Ben Uri mounted the largest exhibition to date of Herman’s work from this rare period.
The Artist
Painter and draughtsman Josef Herman was born into a Jewish, working-class family in Warsaw, Poland on 3 January 1911. He studied at the Warsaw School of Art and Decoration (193031), and first exhibited in his native city in 1932. Following increasing anti-Semitism, he left Poland for Brussels in 1938, where he was inspired by the Belgian Expressionists. With the onset of the Second World War, he was forced to flee via southern France and arrived in Glasgow in 1940, where he was reunited with fellow Polish artist Jankel Adler, whom he had known briefly in Warsaw. Together the two artists contributed, together with Scottish Colourist J D Fergusson, to a resurgence of the Scottish arts scene during this period. Herman moved briefly to London in 1943, exhibiting at the Lefevre Galleries, London (with L S Lowry, 1943) prior to his relocation to the Welsh mining village of Ystradgynlais (1944-55), which gave rise to his best-known body of work focusing on the Welsh miners and their community. In 1951 he was included in the
South Bank Festival of Britain Exhibition and continued to exhibit widely including with the émigré art dealers Roland, Browse & Delbanco (1946, 1948, 1952, then regularly until 1975), in London, with Ben Uri (including alongside Martin Bloch in 1949), at the Geffrye Museum (with Henry Moore, 1954), the Whitechapel Art Gallery (1956) and Camden Arts Centre (1980), as well as at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff (1989), Abbot Hall, Kendal (2005), and many further exhibitions with Flowers and Flowers East Galleries, who represented him for many years.
Josef Herman died in London, England on 19 February 2000. His work is represented in numerous UK public collections including London (Tate, V&A), Wales (National Museum), Scotland (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art); as well as in Canada, Australia, Israel, South Africa and New Zealand. An exhibition exploring his early years in Warsaw, Brussels, Glasgow and London, 1938-43 was held at Ben Uri Gallery in 2011.
Guidance notes on Hitler Émigré Artists
Jankel Adler
Wounded, c. 1940-43
by Jankel Adler (1895-1949)
Oil on paper on board, 54.5 x 37 cm
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After joining the Polish Army in exile following the outbreak of the Second World War, Adler was evacuated to Scotland in 1940, where he was demobilized owing to poor health in 1941. Wounded was probably executed during this period. The title is reminiscent of his larger oils, The Mutilated (1942-43), completed in London, and In No Man’s Land (1943, Tate) and is characteristic of Adler’s haunting portraits from his early years in exile in Britain, drawing on his Polish-Jewish identity, his concern for the fate of his own family and his knowledge of the wider European tragedy then unfolding. Broad patches of colour outline the soldier’s uniform and his outstretched bandaged hands and what appears to be a further bandage around the soldier’s head; touches of red suggest blood. The style is broadly reminiscent of Picasso, one of Adler’s two dominant influences, alongside Paul Klee.
The Artist
Jankel Adler was born into a large orthodox Jewish family on 26 July 1895 in Tuszyn, near Łódź in the Congress Kingdom of Poland (now Poland). He studied engraving in Belgrade in 1912, then art in Barmen and Düsseldorf until 1914. Adler returned to Poland in 1918, becoming a founder-member of Young Yiddish, a Łódź-based group of painters and writers dedicated to the expression of their Jewish identity. During the First World War, he was conscripted into the Russian army, but resettled in Germany in 1920, notably meeting Marc Chagall in Berlin, before returning to Barmen. In 1922 Adler moved to Düsseldorf, joined the Young Rhineland circle, became friends with Otto Dix and helped found ‘Die Kommune’ and the International Exhibition of revolutionary artists in Berlin. His Planetarium frescos in 1925 were highly successful and he exhibited widely. In 1931, at the Düsseldorf Academy, he formed an important friendship with Paul Klee, who had a profound influence on his style.
In 1933 Adler was forced to flee Nazi Germany at the height of his success after his work was declared ‘degenerate’ – he was later included in the infamous ‘Entartete Kunst’ (Degenerate
Art) exhibition in 1937. His arrival in Paris can be seen as part of a ‘second wave’ of artists from Russia, who were drawn west to Germany, then to France, though Adler continued to travel widely until 1937 when he worked with the printmaker Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris. He also met Picasso, who became the second major influence on his style. Adler joined the Polish Army upon the outbreak of the Second World War and was evacuated to Scotland in 1940, where he was demobilized owing to poor health. In Glasgow, he and Josef Herman – whom he had known previously in Poland –became members of the influential Glasgow New Art Club founded by J. D. Fergusson. Adler moved to London in 1943, sharing a house with ‘the two Roberts’, the painters Colquhoun and MacBryde, whose style he greatly influenced.
Jankel Adler died on 25 April 1949 in Aldbourne, Wiltshire, England. A memorial exhibition was organised by the Arts Council in 1951 and a posthumous exhibition on Jankel Adler, Mark Gertler and Bernard Meninsky was held at Ben Uri Gallery in 1957. Adler’s work is held in UK collections including Aberdeen Art Gallery, Glasgow Museums Resource Centre, Pallant House Gallery, Swindon Museum and Art Gallery and Tate Britain, as well as in international collections in Australia, Germany, Israel and the USA. A posthumous major survey exhibition was held in Wuppertal (2018), and a survey of his British years at Ben Uri Gallery (2019).
Guidance notes on Hitler Émigré Artists
Martin Bloch
Svendborg Habour, Denmark, 1934
by Martin Bloch
(1883-1954)
Oil on canvas on board, 69 x 79 cm
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This claustrophobic depiction of boats in a crowded harbour, a classic symbol of exile, was painted during the artist’s brief stay in Denmark after he fled Nazi Germany in 1934. Despite the traumatic experience of flight, it is full of energy and colour. Drawing on his German expressionist roots, Bloch pares down form into simple shapes and conveys emotion through the use of heightened purples, greens and mustard yellows. The compression of the perspective into a single, suffocating plane jams the boats against the harbour and creates a distinct uneasiness. This is one of three works by Bloch in the Ben Uri Collection.
The
Artist
Martin Bloch was born into a non-observant Jewish family in Neisse, Germany (now Nysa, Poland) 16 November 1883. He initially trained as an architect and later studied drawing in Berlin under Lovis Corinth. He held his first solo exhibition at art dealer Paul Cassirer’s Gallery in Berlin in 1911, then travelled to Paris and to Spain, where he lived between 1914 and 1920, before returning to Berlin to co-found a painting school with Anton Kerschbaumer and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Following the rise of the Nazi Regime and the condemnation of his art as ‘degenerate’, Bloch left Germany in 1934, moving first to Denmark and then to England, where he settled in London, opening a second painting school with Australian painter Roy de Maistre in 1936. Four of his oil paintings had already been included in the ‘Exhibition of German-Jewish Artists’ Work: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture’ (5–15 June 1934) organised at the Parsons Gallery, London by German-Jewish emigre dealer, Carl Braunschweig (later Charles Brunswick), which included in total 221 artworks by 86 artists suffering persecution under the Nazi regime. His work was also included in the important ‘Exhibition of Twentieth-Century German Art’ at the New Burlington Galleries in 1938, intended as a riposte to the notorious ‘Entartete Kunst’ (‘Degenerate Art’) exhibition organised by the Nazis in Munich in 1937. Bloch held his first solo London show at the Lefevre Gallery in 1939.
Between 1940 and 1941 Bloch was one of many so-called ‘enemy aliens’ interned, first at Huyton Camp, Liverpool, then briefly on the Isle of Man. Afterwards, he exhibited in Oxford and Cambridge in 1941. He was naturalised in 1947. In 1948 he became a guest teacher in Minneapolis and exhibited in both Minneapolis and Princeton, New Jersey, then resumed his influential teaching career in England, where his fluid style of painting and spontaneous use of colour inspired his students at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (1949-54). He was a regular exhibitor with Ben Uri Gallery, he joined the hanging committee for the 1948 Spring Exhibition, and held a joint exhibition with Josef Herman at Portman Street in 1949. Bloch was recorded as showing much ‘sturm und drang’ in his work and Michael Podro (Martin Bloch: A Painter’s Painter) records that ‘Irrespective of the size of the paintings or the depth of their frames, Bloch wanted to juxtapose his canvases according to the colour relations, warm against cold. They spent days rearranging them until they were utterly exhausted; Bloch ultimately in despair left the hanging to Herman’. Bloch’s work also featured in Ben Uri’s Festival of Britain Anglo-Jewish Exhibition 1851–1951 Art Section, an adjunct to the main Anglo-Jewish Exhibition held at University College in 1951. In the same year he also contributed to the Arts Council exhibition ‘60 Paintings for 51’. In 1952 he had a solo travelling show in Canada.
Martin Bloch died in London, England on 19 June 1954. A retrospective was held at the Beaux Arts Gallery, London in 1955, the Arts Council organised a touring memorial exhibition in 1957 and a further memorial show was held at Ben Uri in 1963. In 2007, Martin Bloch: A Painter’s Painter, was held at the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich. Bloch’s work is represented in numerous UK collections including the British Museum, the Government Art Collection and the Tate.
Guidance notes on Hitler Émigré Artists
Hans Feibusch
Three Messengers, 1988
by Hans Feibusch
(1898-1998)
Gouache on paper, 35 x 21 cm
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This work is compositionally close to Study of Angels (1988, gouache on board, Private Collection), with the study very likely a preparatory piece to this more finished composition painted in the same year. Both works are executed in gouache and feature three winged figures: a central figure with upturned hands, flanked by two further figures with arms raised to chest height. The study, carried out on squared paper, uses a predominantly yellow and pink palette, this composition employs a deeper and contrasting grey, orange and purple palette. The subject matter reflects the biblical figures and motifs in Feibusch’s many mural commissions for churches and cathedrals.
The Artist
Painter, illustrator, lithographer, author, muralist and sculptor Hans Feibusch was born into a Jewish family in Frankfurt, Germany on 15 August 1898. After serving in the First World War, he settled in Berlin in 1920 to study painting, where he won the Prix de Rome and travelled to Italy, encountering and admiring Italian Renaissance mural paintings, before completing his studies in Paris. Upon his return to Germany, as a member of the Frankfurt Künstlerbund, he was tasked with his fellow members with designing a set of murals and undertook to teach himself the necessary techniques and procedures. After winning the Prussian State Prize for Painting in 1930 however, he aroused Nazi antagonism. After his pictures were publicly burned, and he was forbidden to paint he found refuge in Britain in 1933, joining his British fiancée in London.
In 1934 Feibusch first exhibited with the Ben Uri Gallery in May-June, showing concurrently in the ‘Exhibition of German-Jewish Artists’ Work’ at the Parsons Gallery, London, organised by German-Jewish émigré dealer Carl Braunschweig (Charles Brunswick) to highlight artists suffering persecution under the Nazi regime. Later that year, Feibusch held the first of five solo shows at the Lefevre Galleries, London, and also began to exhibit regularly with the London Group (until 1939), where his work attracted attention. In 1937 his work was included in the notorious touring Nazi ‘degenerate’ art show, first mount-
ed in Munich, and in 1938 it also featured in the important exhibition of ‘Twentieth-century German Art’ at the New Burlington Galleries in London, intended as a riposte to the Nazi show. In spring 1943 Feibusch also participated in the AIA ‘For Liberty’ exhibition in the basement of John Lewis’ department store in Oxford Street.
Following his first public mural in England, ‘The Footwashing’, for the Methodist Chapel in Colliers Wood, commissioned by Edward D. Mills in 1937, Feibusch was championed by Dr George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, and commissioned to paint a chapel in Brighton, which led to many other Church of England commissions, including for Chichester Cathedral. Feibusch went on to become Britain’s most prolific muralist, creating work in some 35 Anglican churches and cathedrals, among them St. John’s Waterloo, as well as five panels for the Stern Hall at West London Synagogue (now in the Ben Uri Collection), and two town halls; he published his book on mural painting in 1946. He featured in the 1951 Festival of Britain as both a painter and a muralist and post-war served on the Ben Uri Arts Committee.
Feibusch exhibited widely including at the Royal Academy (from 1944), the Ben Uri Gallery, including solo exhibitions in 1970 and 1977, and at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester in 1995 (subsequently touring to Ben Uri and other venues). In the 1970s Feibusch was forced to abandon painting after his eyesight began to fail and he took up sculpture. Although he had converted to Anglicanism in the 1960s, in his later years he reverted to his Jewish faith. He died in London, England on 18 July 1998 and his estate bequeathed the entire contents of his studio to Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. His work is also held in other UK collections including the Tate.
Guidance notes on Hitler Émigré Artists
Ludwig Meidner
Portrait of a Girl (1921)
by Ludwig Meidner (1884-1966)
Charcoal on Paper, 68 x 50.5 cm
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This compelling portrait by Ludwig Meidner, dated 1921, exemplifies the artist’s deeply ex-pressive approach to figuration during a period of personal and political turbulence in Weimar Germany. Executed in bold, gestural strokes of black ink or charcoal, the drawing captures a young woman ’ s introspective, even melancholic gaze, rendered with the psychological intensity characteristic of Meidner’s interwar work. The thick, agitated lines and exaggerated contours convey an emotional weight that transcends mere likeness, situating the sitter in a liminal space between realism and expressionist distor-tion. By 1921, Meidner had already emerged as a prominent figure within German Expressionism, known for his Apocalyptic Landscapes and stark, often spiritual portraiture. Having served in World War I and subsequently embraced pacifism, his focus turned to intimate, often unidealised representations of Jewish life and human vulnerability. This portrait reflects that shift, suggesting a quiet dignity and resilience amid inner turmoil. The sitter’s downward gaze and clenched arms imply psychological resistance or guardedness—perhaps an unconscious reflection of the artist’s own marginalisation as a Jewish intellectual in an increasingly hostile political climate. This work anticipates the raw, unflinching portraits Meidner would produce in exile, and stands as a poignant testament to his search for truth and humanity through the drawn line.
The Artist
Ludwig Meidner was born into a Jewish family in Bernstadt, Germany (now Bierutów, Poland) on 18 April 1884 and studied in Breslau, Berlin and Paris. Apprenticed unsuccessfully as a stonemason, he then worked as a fashion illustrator. In 1912 he began the Apocalyptic Landscapes series anticipating the carnage and destruction of the First World War and exhibited with Die Pathetiker group in Herwarth Walden’s influential gallery, Der Sturm. An avowed pacifist following military service, Meidner painted Jewish religious and mystical works, Rembrandt-inspired self-portraits, and portraits of leading expres-
sionists, Dada writers and poets. In 1934 four of his drawings - all entitled ‘Jews Prayingwere included in the ‘Exhibition of GermanJewish Artists’ Work: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture’ (5-15 June 1934) organised at the Parsons Gal-lery, London by GermanJewish emigre dealer, Carl Braunschweig (later Charles Brunswick). Withrisinganti-Semitismin Berlin,Meidnerandhis family moved to Cologne in 1935, where he workedasa drawingteacherataJewishschool.In1937 his work was included in the infamous ‘De-generate Art’ exhibition mounted by the Nazis in Munich, and he subsequently participated in the 1938 Exhibition of Twentieth Century German Art at the New Burlington Galleries in London, organised as a riposte the following year. In August 1939 the Meidners fled to England and Ludwig was interned from 1940–41: first at Huyton Camp, Liverpool, and then in Hutchinson on the Isle of Man, known as the ‘artists’ camp’ for its cohort of notable artistinternees, 90% of whom were Jewish. Meidner found a safe, religiously tolerant and intellectually stimulating environ-ment, and the means to continue drawing, dur-ing internment, and even petitioned to stay on. Postwar he remained in London, dependent on support from the émigré community, particularly art historian J. P. Hodin, and unsuccessfully attempted to establish a Jewish art society with fellow émigré Jankel Adler. Meidner also joined the Ohel Club in Gower Street for Jewish refugee intellectuals and artists including Jankel Adler, Josef Herman, Marek Szwarc, Martin Bloch and David Bomberg. Meidner also exhibited works including ‘In a Concentration Camp’ in the ex-hibition Subjects of Jewish Interest in December 1946. In late 1949 he held a joint Ben Uri show with his wife and fellow painter Else Meidner. Meidner finally returned alone to Germany in 1953 to renewed acclaim and awards.
Ludwig Meidner died in Darmstadt, Germany on 14 May 1966. A joint retrospective of work by both Meidners was held at Ben Uri in 2002. In the UK his work can be found in the Ben Uri Collection, the Fitzwilliam Museum and Leices-ter Museum & Art Gallery
Guidance notes on Hitler Émigré Artists
by Alva (1901-1973)
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This enigmatic painting by Alva (née Siegfried Solomon Alweiss) embodies the artist’s engagement with spiritual symbolism, displacement, and the expressive potential of form. Rendered in a subdued palette of earth tones and shadowy hues, the composition presents a robed, bearded figure—possibly a prophet or patriarch —emerg-ing from a nebulous, undefined space. The fig-ure’s elongated proportions and outstretched hand suggest both authority and supplication, while the faint landscape lines beneath hint at a journey or promised land, evoking narratives of exile and revelation central to the Jewish tradi-tion.
Painted in the wake of Alva’s forced migration from Germany and amid the trauma of statelessness, the work draws upon his lifelong oscillation between figuration and abstraction to explore metaphysical themes. The ethereal handling of paint and neardisintegration of the figure into its environment signal the influence of both modernist Parisian training and the spiritual austerity of his Jewish heritage. Like his 1938 painting Exodus, this work likely serves as a meditation on exile and prophetic endurance, resonating with the broader displacement of Eu-ropean Jewry during the interwar period. Alva’s synthesis of mystical subject matter with expressionist form positions this painting within a broader diasporic modernism, where identity, memory, and revelation are distilled into potent visual symbols.
The Artist
Alva (né Siegfried Solomon Alweiss) was born on 29 May 1901 in Berlin to observant Jewish Galician parents. He spent his early years in Galicia before returning to Germany. Initially pursuing a career in commerce, he later studied music at Stern’s Konservatorium (1919–1925), before turning to art. In 1925, he legally shortened his name to Alva, studied painting in Paris in 1928, and exhibited at the Salon d’Automne. His first solo exhibition took place in Tel Aviv in 1934 after travels in Palestine, Syria, and Greece.
Following Hitler’s rise in 1933, Alva became
stateless when his passport was revoked due to his parents’ non-German status. He relocated to France and fled to London in 1938. That same year, he completed Exodus, a symbolic painting referencing both the biblical story and his per-sonal displacement, reflecting the broader trau-ma of war and persecution under Nazism.
In 1940, Alva was briefly interned on the Isle of Man as an ‘enemy alien’, producing a series of internment drawings. After his release, a mono-graph by Maurice Collis was published in 1942, with a second in 1951, featuring a foreword by Herbert Read. He exhibited at the Lefevre Gal-lery in 1943 and joined Ben Uri Gallery’s inau-gural exhibition at its Portman Street premises in 1944. His long association with the gallery included a lecture in 1948 on ‘The Purpose of Painting’ and participation in several group shows (1949, 1950, 1956).
Alva held solo exhibitions at Waddington Gal-leries (1958), Leger Galleries, and the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (1955), with further shows across Europe, Israel, the U.S., and South Africa. His expressive work moved between figuration and abstraction, frequently engaging with Jewish themes.
He illustrated a version of the first chapter of Genesis and created a lithograph series on the Prophets, exhibited at St George’s Gallery in 1949. He also contributed to Yiddish publica-tions in London from the late 1930s to the 1940s, including designs for Y.A. Liski’s Produktivizat-sie (1937), For, du kleyner kozak! (1942), and Malka Locker’s Shtetl. He painted portraits of Locker and Yiddish poet Itzik Manger, as well as symbolist works exploring Jewish life.
Alva died in London on 13 November 1973, the year his autobiography With Pen and Brush was published. His work is held in UK collections in-cluding Ben Uri and has featured in exhibitions in 1985, 1988, 1998, and 2017.
Guidance notes on Hitler Émigré Artists
Fred Uhlman
Welsh Cottages, c. 1950
by Fred Uhlman
(1901-1985)
Oil on canvas, 60 x 90 cm
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‘Welsh Cottages’ reflects Uhlman’s long love affair with the Welsh landscape, which later earned him the title the ‘Anglo-German Welshman’ (Graham Samuel, Western Mail, 11 March 1968). He first visited Wales during the war with family holidays to Portmeirion, a coastal village in Cardigan Bay, designed and conceived by architect and fellow Hampstead resident, Clough Williams-Ellis. Williams-Ellis wrote the text for Uhlman’s 1946 publication, ‘An Artist in North Wales’, and later transformed an old cowshed in the Croesor Valley, Beuddy Neuwdd (New Barn), into a small house for the Uhlmans. The artist described it as standing in ‘the most dramatic scenery of the whole British Isles and of all Europe perhaps’, adding, ‘I have travelled wide and far – and I know what I am talking about’.
From a steep path behind the house, he would ascend to a field where, working at an immense slate table, he sketched the dramatic landscape in changing light, afterwards working up his ideas into finished paintings back in his London studio. He favoured a strong palette, particularly red sunsets, alternately fiery and brooding, or moonlit skies, always meticulously painted and mostly devoid of figures, evoking his feeling for ‘the loneliness and overwhelming grandeur of the country’.
The Artist
Fred (né Manfred) Uhlman was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Stuttgart, Germany 19 January 1901 and trained as a lawyer. He became a self-taught painter while living in Paris, where he fled following Hitler’s accession to the German Chancellorship in 1933, and where he gained a reputation as a ‘naïve’ artist, holding his first solo exhibition in 1936. In 1938 he moved to England with his aristocratic wife Diana Croft, and their Hampstead home became the headquarters of the Free German League of Culture and the Artists’ Refugee Committee, and a centre of émigré activity during the war. In 1938 he had the first of two solo shows at the Zwemmer Gallery, London, and participated in the Exhibition of Twentieth Century German Art at the New Burlington Galleries in London,
intended as a riposte to the Nazi ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition, mounted in Munich in 1937. During his six-month internment as a so-called ‘enemy alien’ at Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man in 1940, he produced around 150 drawings, some later published as ‘Captivity’ by Jonathan Cape in 1946.
Uhlman exhibited regularly throughout the war and afterwards, holding solo shows at galleries including the Leicester Galleries (1942), the Redfern Gallery (1953), Plymouth City Art Gallery (1966), and Camden Arts Centre (1973), and participated in numerous group exhibitions including with the Artists’ International Association (AIA), the London Group, and at Ben Uri Gallery (from 1945). Uhlman had a profound artistic engagement with Wales over three decades and held a retrospective at Powys Hall, Bangor in 1960. He later published his autobiography, ‘The Making of an Englishman’, in 1960, followed by his novel, ‘Reunion’, in 1977. Fred Uhlman died in London, England on 11 April 1985. His work is represented in numerous UK collections including the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Government Art Collection, the Imperial War Museum and the V&A.
Guidance notes on Hitler Émigré Artists
Feliks Topolski
Camp Guards and Inmates after Liberation, 1945
by Feliks Topolski
(1907-1989)
Print on paper, 73 x 105 cm
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During the Second World War, Topolski, already in England, was appointed an official war artist for the Polish government in exile, and then for the British government. Picture Post magazine sent him to Russia, and he also travelled to Egypt, Palestine, the Levant, India and Burma. In April 1945 Topolski accompanied the Polish II Corps to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, arriving two weeks after its liberation. His drawings of the camp featured in Ben Uri’s 1947 exhibition, Subjects of Jewish Interest, and Topolski subsequently worked as an official artist at the Nuremberg Trials. His distinctive and dynamic style of draughtsmanship made him one of the most celebrated Polish artists in Britain. Topolski’s Chronicles – published in multiple instalments between 1953 and 1982 and containing over 2,300 drawings – and from which this image has been taken and cut down – were inspired by seventeenth and eighteenth-century broadsheets, combined with Topolski’s on-thespot sketches. Each image was hand-printed on rough brown “butcher’s” paper on a press in his studio, and each issue, devoted to a different news item, was distributed to 2,000 global subscribers, including museums, universities, libraries and private collections. The breadth and scope of the Chronicles show Topolski’s position at the heart of political, cultural and social debates of his time.
The Artist
Feliks Topolski was born Felicjan Typlel-Topolski in Warsaw, Poland on 14 August 1907 and trained at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. He arrived in England in 1935, commissioned by “Wiadomości Literackie” (“Literary News”) to record King George V’s Silver Jubilee. During the Second World War he was appointed an official war artist for the Polish government in exile, and then for the British government, commissioned to make drawings of life in London during the air raids of October 1940. He also visited the Russian Front for “Picture Post” magazine for six months from 1941-42 and made independent submissions to the War Artists’ Advisory Commitee until the end of the war. Further travels took him to Egypt, Palestine, the
Levant, India and Burma. He accompanied the Polish II Corps, arriving in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp two weeks after its liberation in April 1945; his drawings of the camp featured in Ben Uri’s 1947 exhibition, “Subjects of Jewish Interest”. He subsequently worked as an official artist at the Nuremberg Trials. Topolski was also known for his portraits of writers including H. G.Wells, Graham Greene, John Mortimer and Evelyn Waugh, and politicians Harold Macmillan and Aneurin Bevan. He also painted murals, contributed to BBC programmes, and designed theatrical sets. He was elected a senior Royal Academician as a draughtsman in 1989. Feliks Topolski died in London, England on 24 August 1989. His work is in UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the Government Art Collection, The Ingram Collection of Modern British and Contemporary Art, the National Portrait Gallery, and the National Trust (Wightwick Manor).
Guidance notes on Hitler Émigré Artists
Elizabeth Tomalin
Head, c. 1928-34
by Elisabeth Tomalin (1912-2012)
Gouache on paper, 51 x 36.1 cm
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Elisabeth Tomalin’s boldly-coloured head, elaborately constructed in pastel and gouache facets, was created during her studentship at Berlin’s progressive Reimann Schule, where she studied from the late 1920s until 1934. It takes inspiration from tribal masks and enamels, which she studied under noted Professor K H Rosenberg; also studying textile art and decorative painting with Erna Hitzberger. After immigrating to the UK, Tomalin brought both aspects of her training together, becoming a colour consultant at Heal’s and a successful designer in the British textile industry, setting up her own designs in a number of colourways. This process is anticipated in her choice of different colours for the two sides of her subject’s face, hair and background.
The Artist
Textile designer and art therapist, Elisabeth Tomalin (née Wallach) was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Dresden, Germany on 4 October 1912, the youngest of four children. She despised her parents’ bourgeois lifestyle and she moved to Vienna, distancing herself from her family. Through her much older boyfriend, Ernst Wagner, anthroposophist and art teacher, she developed an interest in Jungian psychology, which became a life-long fascination. She attended the first Eranos conference in Switzerland in 1933 and at this time started using a mysterious invented name, ‘Suaja’ for herself. Encouraged to pursue a career in art, Tomalin enrolled in Berlin’s progressive, Jewish-owned Reimann Schule, where she was influenced by her enamelling tutor, Professor K H Rosenberg, particularly in her distinctive approach to colour, and in understanding the design potential of mandalas and batiks. With the rise of Nazism the School was forced to close, and Tomalin left without formal qualifications. Fleeing Germany alone in 1936, she arrived in London without a visa, unable to find suitable employment; unlike many of her female peers, she would not countenance the unhappy alternative of arriving on a domestic visa.
Taking temporary refuge in Paris, she took on enough ‘black market’ work to create a portfolio and was then readmitted to Britain as a ful-
ly-fledged designer, securing work with Barlow & Company in Manchester, manufacturer of printed silks, before the war affected the production of luxury goods. In 1939 she met Miles Tomalin, journalist, poet, musician, and former International Brigade fighter, at a refugee soup kitchen where he was working (and she was eating). His family owned the clothing firm, Jaeger, but were unable to employ her. Miles divorced his first wife, Beth Tomalin, and married Elisabeth on 25 July 1940, thus sparing her the indignity of internment. During the war Tomalin worked in the practice of modernist architect Ernő Goldfinger, and at the Exhibitions department of the Ministry of Information. Her daughter, Stefany, was born in 1945; several portraits of mother and daughter were taken by renowned émigrée photographer (and spy), Edith Tudor-Hart (see Ben Uri Collection). By May 1948, Tomalin was employed by Alexander Felgate in his silk printing business, who then introduced her to Marks and Spencer, where she was appointed head of the new textile print studio from 1949, designing fabrics for colourful ‘New Look’ dresses for the masses.
As the main breadwinner, Elisabeth was restless, driven, critical and ambitious, while Miles found it difficult to secure permanent employment. Around 1956, having parted amicably, the couple moved into separate flats in a new block designed by Goldfinger on Regents Park Road. During the 1960s, having left M&S Tomalin variously worked as a furnishing colour consultant at Heal & Son; a freelance designer of wrapping paper for J. Royle; for Slumberland; and as a textile designer for Ramm Son & Crocker. Her interest in psychology remained, and after retiring from the commercial world in her sixties, she retrained as an art therapist in New York with her childhood friend, émigrée Ruth Cohn, who ran the Workshop Institute for Living Learning. She returned regularly to Germany to work with patients and trainees, eventually publishing on her methods, and assisting in establishing one of the first accredited post-graduate qualification for art therapists in Germany. Elisabeth Tomalin died on 8 March 2012 in London, England.
Guidance notes on Hitler Émigré Artists
Kurt Schwitters
Untitled: für Frau Fränkel, 1927 by Kurt
Schwitters
(1887-1948)
Collage on card, 7.6 x 5 cm
A zoomable image of this painting is available on our website to use in the classroom with an interactive whiteboard or projector.
This tiny work, listed as no. 1515a in the Schwitters Catalogue Raisonné, exemplifies Schwitters’ highly individual way of working, fusing his interest in the avant garde group Dada - which saw the modern world as meaningless - with a collage technique. It was acquired directly from the family of the sculptor Elsa Fraenkel in June 2019 and provides a fascinating link between these two refugees from Nazism, whose earlier friendship was rekindled in England. The inclusion of the word ‘Paris’ references Schwitters’ visit to Paris in 1927, as well as Fraenkel’s own trips there in the 1920s.
The Artist
Installation artist, painter and poet, Kurt Schwitters was born into an affluent family in Hanover, Germany on 20 June 1887. Having studied in Dresden alongside Otto Dix and George Grosz, in 1919, partly influenced by the Dadaists, he created his own idiosyncratic art form: Merz –a term derived from the name ‘Kommerz- und Privatbank’ which appeared on a cut-up scrap of newspaper – which united all aspects of his prolific output: painting, collage, sculpture, architecture, poetry, drama, typography and happenings. From 1923 his home in Hanover became his most complete Merzbau installation, its rooms filled with the detritus of everyday life alongside larger-scale architectural elements.
Schwitters’ avant-garde work brought him increasingly into conflict with the Nazi regime from 1933 onwards. His contract with Hanover City Council was terminated in 1934 and examples of his work in German museums were confiscated and derided in 1935. Following the arrest of members of his close circle, he was wanted for questioning by the Gestapo and on 2 January 1937 Schwitters followed his son and fled to Norway where a second Merzbau was constructed. Following Nazi Germany’s invasion of Norway, Schwitters was amongst a number of German citizens who were interned by the Norwegian authorities at Vågan Folk High School in Kabelvåg on the Lofoten Islands. Following his release, Schwitters fled to Leith, Scotland with his son and daughter-in-law on the Norwegian
patrol vessel Fridtjof Nansen between 8 and 18 June 1940. By now officially an ‘enemy alien’, he and his son were moved between various internment camps in Scotland and England before arriving on 17 July 1940 at Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man. He produced over 200 works during his internment, including more portraits than at any other time in his career, many of which he charged for, and also contributed to the camp newsletter, The Camp.
After his release on 21st November 1941, Schwitters moved to London where he mixed with artists including fellow émigrés Jankel Adler, Naum Gabo and László Moholy-Nagy and the English artist Ben Nicholson. In August 1942 he moved with his son to 39 Westmoreland Road, Barnes, London relocating after the war to Ambleside in the Lake District. With the original Hannover Merzbau destroyed by allied bombing in 1943, Schwitters created a new Merzbau on a barn wall in Ambleside, funded by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After a second stroke in February 1946, he and his companion Edith Thomas (‘Wantee’) moved to 4 Millans Park.
Kurt Schwitters died in Kendal, England on 8 January 1948. His work is represented in UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection and Tate, and many international collections including MoMA. The Sprengel Museum, Hanover holds the Schwitters archive and the most comprehensive documentation of his work and section of Schwitters’ Ambleside Merzbau is now on permanent display at Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University.
