HUGO DACHINGER (1908-1995)
PORTRAIT OF A MAN: WILHELM HOLLITSCHER (HUYTON INTERNMENT CAMP, LIVERPOOL
1940
Watercolour and gouache on newsprint
Signed (lower right): 'Dachinger', inscribed 'Huyton' and dated '[19]40'
Hugo ‘Puck’ Dachinger’s Portrait of a Man: Wilhelm Hollitscher exemplifies his inventive synthesis of fine art and graphic media, shaped by both his training in commercial design and his wartime exile Painted directly onto the pages of a 1940 edition of The Times, this striking portrait overlays traditional figurat-
tion with the visual language of mass communication The ghostly blue-hued figure, rendered in loose, expressive brushstrokes, gazes intensely outward, his visage etched with the psychological weight of observation and introspection The stark contrast between the immediacy of the painted form and the static, typographic grid of the newspaper evokes themes of impermanence, displacement, and the shifting narratives of history Dachinger’s use of a newspaper background is emblematic of the émigré artist’s engagement with temporality and public record. Created during or shortly after his internment as a so-called 'enemy alien' on the Isle of Man (1940–41), the work bridges his lived experience of persecution with a broader reflection on the power and fragility of representation The painting’s date during a moment of global conflict is reinforced by the newspaper’s headline, grounding the portrait within the anxieties of wartime Britain This work showcases Dachinger’s hybrid practice: at once modernist, documentary, and deeply human, resisting erasure through visual assertion
This head-and-shoulders portrait of a white-haired man with startlingly blue eyes, painted in the third month of the artist's internment at Huyton internment camp in Liverpool in August 1940, has been identified by the sitter's family as fellow internee Wilhelm Hollitscher (1873-1943), former Chief Engine-
er of the Danube Shipping Company and President of the Vienna Singer Academy Hollitscher, who kept detailed diaries of the experience, was among the circle of middle-class refugee intellectuals, writers and artists with whom Dachinger mixed in camp He recorded his first sitting on 5th August and his last on the 8th, followed by a second portrait made on the 10th, a third on the 14th and a fourth and final portrait on the 21st In June 1940, following Churchill's directive to 'Collar the lot!', Dachinger had been swept up in the mass internment of around 27,000 so-called 'enemy aliens', mostly Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution, who were interned in hastily adapted camps all over the country Dachinger spent five months at Huyton Camp, Liverpool within the recently built Woolfall Heath Estate, surrounded by an eight-metre high barbed wire fence Despite the poor conditions and overcrowding at Huyton,
Dachinger's artistic output was prolific and included landscapes, scenes of everyday life, posters and even nudes, as well as vivid, often highly coloured portraits. The blue and yellow palette can be found in other Huyton portraits (one dated only three days earlier). Hollitscher's overcoat has a military feel, perhaps further suggested by the visible headline 'Air Fights in Many Spheres', but carries no insignia, and he may be wearing an 'overall suit' , sent to him in late July Dachinger's warm treatment of his subject contrasts with his sharply satirical, sometimes cartoonish works featuring camp officers With traditional art materials in short supply, Dachinger and fellow artists (who included Martin Bloch and Walter Nessler) executed works in a variety of accessible media, often using discarded newspapers (The Times was considered the best) as supports These could be primed with gelatine collected from boiled-down bones mixed with flour, a method leaving stories of war tantalisingly visible beneath, and which Dachinger, a former designer, often included to great effect (the visible righthand column of 'Domestic Situations Wanted' is a reminder that this was the only hope of passage for many female ). Twigs were also burnt to create charcoal and paints made from brick dust or food ground with linseed oil or olive oil from sardine cans, though here Dachinger appears to have used thinned watercolours perhaps mixed with toothpaste (particularly in the hair) to make the pigments less transparent Following Huyton, Dachinger was sent in October 1940 until his release in January 1941, to Mooragh Camp Ramsey on the Isle of Man, where he continued to produce arresting works In November he held an exhibition of his internment drawings entitled Art Behind Barbed Wire, advertised with a striking poster of his own design, and later exhibited at London's Redfern Gallery in April 1941.
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