MASTERPIECES FROM THE BEN URI COLLECTION
MARTIN BLOCH (1883-1954)
SVENDBORG HARBOUR, DENMARK
1934
Oil on canvas on board
Signed (lower right): Martin Bloch
MARTIN BLOCH
Martin Bloch’s Svendborg Harbour, Denmark (c 1940s) captures the dynamism and atmosphere of a coastal industrial port through the lens of Expressionist color and compositional vitality Painted during Bloch’s years of exile in Scandinavia and the United Kingdom having fled Nazi Germany in 1934 the work refle-
cts both his personal displacement and his continued engagement with European modernist currents The setting, the Danish town of Svendborg on the island of Funen, is rendered not as a picturesque locale but as a living, working environment, imbued with movement, structure, and psychological resonance Bloch’s use of vibrant, non-naturalistic color and gestural brushwork reveals the influence of German Expressionism, while also anticipating post-war developments in British painting The harbor scene is animated by rhythmic forms: cranes, masts, and rigging interlace with sky and water, producing a semi-abstract, almost musical composition. There is a palpable tension between the solidity of the industrial architecture and the fluidity of the sea and sky underscoring themes of stability and flux that resonate with Bloch’s own migratory experience Svendborg Harbour is more than a landscape; it is an exploration of place as both external reality and internal state Through expressive form and chromatic intensity, Bloch constructs a vivid meditation on modernity, exile, and belonging
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, a then travelled to
Oaris 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.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
COLLECTION: https://benuri org/collections/
BURU: https://www.buru.org.uk/
