Dora Holzhandler Exhibition Catalogue

Dora Holzhandler A Celebration

goldmark

‘Dora Holzhandler’s beautiful paintings of lovers, family groups, solitary contemplatives, mothers and children and people at home and in the marketplace, are at once movingly intimate and universal in feeling.’

Philip Vann

Catalogue price £10

Dora Holzhandler A Celebration

Dora Holzhandler

A Celebration

Edited and compiled by Philip Vann

goldmark 2014

This edition ďŹ rst published in September 2014 to accompany an exhibition at Goldmark Gallery.

All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-909167-16-2 Editor: Philip Vann 2014 Photography: Christian Soro/Jay Goldmark Design: Porter/Goldmark

Goldmark Gallery 14 Orange Street Uppingham Rutland, LE15 9SQ 01572 821424 www.goldmarkart.com

front cover:

1. Lovers in Nice (Lovers with Mimosa), oil on canvas, 1992, 65.5 x 54.5 cm inside front cover:

2. Lady with Bird, watercolour, 2013, 22.5 x 24.5 cm back cover:

37. Sabbath Meal, oil on canvas, 40.5 x 50.5 cm

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Dora Holzhandler Maureen Lipman CBE ‘Once the picture is begun it’s just a question of finding it.’

These are the words of the sublime painter Dora Holzhandler and to me they pin down precisely what I love about her. Her paintings are meditations on her past, her present and on the universal themes of love, life and spirituality. They are eternal. Like Mozart, she muses on a theme. Her work is soft, sensual and looks you straight in the face.

I treasure my Dora paintings and my pastels. They are the jewels of my small collection. When I paint myself, I try to follow her idea that somehow the work of art already exists and the task ahead is somehow to give it breath, form, shape and life.

There are recurring themes of chequered borders, water, children, flowers all suffused in warm light but never twee or kitsch because they are so full of wit and tenderness.

In case you haven’t guessed, I am her greatest fan.

August 2014

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Dora with her father Sehia, 1929

Dora and husband George, 1953

Dora’s mother Ruchla

Dora and family

Dora on her thirteenth birthday

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Dora Holzhandler and Josef Herman David Herman My father, Josef Herman, was very fond of Dora and greatly admired her work. There were some obvious personal affinities. Both came from humble Jewish backgrounds.

Dora’s father was a handbag-maker, Josef’s was an illiterate cobbler. Both fathers came from Warsaw though Dora was born in Paris.

Dora and Josef both came to Britain from the continent, Dora from Paris in 1934, Josef after the Fall of France in 1940. And, crucially, both were artistic outsiders, very different to the mainstream British traditions. In their very different ways, their careers suggest how foreign artists can find a personal voice without being overwhelmed by Englishness or by particular foreign influences.

Josef Herman, inscribed verso ‘With love to my friend to Joseph [sic] Herman from Dora Holzhandler 1990/96’

Above all, Jewishness was important to their work. Dora’s work, most obviously.

Works like Hebrew Class (1987), My Grandparents (1988), Rabbi with Roses (1990), Succot Meal (1993) and Channukah (1993) could hardly be more Jewish: the tall bearded men in dark coats, the glowing Sabbath candles and the prayer shawls.

In her recent portrait of Nigel Kennedy (2013), he could be a klezmer musician (not unreasonably since it was painted at a time when he was drawn to klezmer).

Josef’s first works in this country, the Memory of Memories drawings from wartime Glasgow (1940-43), were an attempt to recapture the Jewish Warsaw of his childhood and the rabbis, peddlers and musicians of his beloved Yiddish literature.

However, after he left Glasgow, and, in particular, after the news of the death of his entire family in Warsaw, Jewishness became an impossible subject for him and he abandoned the ethnic particularism of these Jewish figures for the more universal working figures – coal miners, peasants, fishermen, mothers – which made his name.

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For any modern Jewish artist there is the question of how to deal with the weight of Chagall’s influence. Josef’s Glasgow works were obviously influenced to some extent by Chagall. However, in a journal entry in October 1948, he wrote: ‘I know exactly how I got onto this Chagallic trick but it no longer has any interest for me.

Charm cannot be a substitute for good painting and Chagall paints poorly. . .’ That night he ‘took out for burning some pictures and stacks of drawings [of Jewish life]: a curious delight.’ His break with Chagall, was both a break with Jewish subject matter but also a turn to different artistic traditions and styles. In the same journal entry, he writes: ‘With me now, painting begins with the itch for handling pigment.

The greater the sense for pigments the greater the painting.’

Dora, by contrast, never broke with Chagall. She once said she finds Chagall ‘not so much an influence as a similar sort of soul.’ You can see the similarities in the subject matter: the ‘floating’ figures, the lovers, the old-world charm, the flowers and the traditional Jewish imagery.

There is another similarity which binds her to Chagall: the almost complete absence of images of persecution or of the Holocaust. In Philip Vann’s excellent monograph, Dora Holzhandler (Lund Humphries, 1997), the one hundred reproductions do not include a single image of pogroms or anti-Jewish violence. This contributes to the sweet gentleness and innocence of her work. I am grateful, however, to Vann for pointing out to me one important exception: My Grandfather in Auschwitz (1962) (Collection Ben Uri, The London Jewish Museum of Art), a powerful and very graphic image foregrounding an old man in striped uniform with a yellow star. In his book, he also quotes Dora on the Holocaust: ‘Every Jew has a broken heart, or at least every Jew of my generation. I'm not bitter. But the consciousness has been affected by the sufferings of the pogroms and the Holocaust.’

By contrast, even Josef’s most sentimental body of work, his drawings of Jewish life, included a number of terrifying images of violence, of pogroms and refugees fleeing burning villages. He and Dora not only differed about Chagall. They have a very different take on the dark side of modern Jewish history.

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In the 1990s Dora painted Josef’s portrait (1990/1996). It is surely no coincidence that in his hands he holds a small black book on which is written, ‘JOSEPH [sic] HERMAN A JEWISH ART [not entirely legible].’ In the top right-hand corner is a copy of one of his most Jewish paintings, Sabbati Zvi (1942-43), a picture of the famous 17th century Jewish pseudo-messiah. In the bottom right-hand corner is a blooming pink rose. It is hard to imagine an image less evocative of Josef, or more typical of Dora (see Lovers with Roses, 1993, Mother and Child in Park, 1990).

Apart from the round face, the painting is not much of a likeness of Josef. The figure looks more like Nabokov’s Pnin, but there is no mistaking the affection with which it is painted. On the back is written, in flowing handwriting, ‘With love to my friend’. He treasured the gift over the last years of his life and it now hangs in our home next to its soul-mate, Sabbati Zvi.

David Herman was a TV arts producer for 20 years and is now a freelance writer and has written for a number of magazines and newspapers including Standpoint, Prospect, The New Statesman, The Jewish Chronicle, The Guardian and The Independent.

August 2014

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3. Burlesque Dancer, oil on canvas, 2014, 80 x 60 cm

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Dora Holzhandler Matthew Sturgis Naïve art is a rare and special thing. A few years ago there was a wonderful exhibition at Tate Modern of work by Henri Rousseau the customs-officer and self-taught artist taken up by Matisse and the Fauves and, most significantly, Picasso. Having an overseas visitor staying with us we dragged her along to the show. She was not what might be called an ‘artistic’ person. Indeed she had never heard of Rousseau and knew nothing of his work. When we met up at the end of the exhibition, she confessed that she had found the show quite interesting – but rather sad.

Sadness, at least to me, seemed an odd response to the glorious intensity of Rousseau’s art. But as she went on to explain: ‘he worked so hard at his painting his whole life – and he never seemed to get any better.’

By ‘better’ she meant less naïve, more photographically accurate in his depiction of form, more sophisticated in his handling of perspective, more true to the effects of light upon three-dimensional space. But – of course, for those who enjoy Rousseau’s work - the preservation of his naïve vision throughout his career is one of his triumphs. It is the true stamp of his genius. It makes clear that his vision stood at the very centre of his creative endeavour, rather than being a technical adjunct to it.

The same is true for Dora Holzhandler. She too is a true naïve painter. She has sustained a rare personal vision for over six decades.

Her richly coloured paintings of entwined lovers, doting mothers, abundant families, learned rabbis, and solitary questing figures abound with a celebratory sense of the mysteries of everyday life. This is special in itself. Yet in Holzhandler’s work these mysteries are always approached with the same, frank and unsentimental directness. In this artistic world, the divine may be ever-present, but it is rooted in the human.

Holzhandler’s pictures are often tightly patterned, stitched with chequerboard

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motifs, with bold stripes, with swirling paisleys or with millefiori. The rules of perspective are almost always ignored, the picture plane tipped up to allow for the depiction and enjoyment of intricately designed rugs and carpets, for ornate paved pathways, or flower-strewn meadows. The patterns create a sense of order, a framework in which the human drama is played out. But they never threaten to overwhelm the human element. The figures in Holzhandler’s paintings are supported by their surroundings, not constrained by them. The lovers and mothers, and sisters and brothers seem to float, buoyed up by something (love, perhaps) amidst the coloured grids and bars, finding each instinctively with the help of their patterned coordinates.

Holzhandler’s art derives not only from how she looks at the world but also from how she lives in it. The close connection between her life and her art is immediately brought home to anyone who meets her.

She is an exceptional and delightful presence: her small stature: the big dark inquiring eyes framed by the bob of now greying hair, the sing-song cadence of her bird-like voice, the brightly coloured outfits – which have the appearance at least of having been plundered from some psychedelic jumble sale. There is about her a vivid sense of childlike innocence. But, just as importantly, this is backed by a sense of childlike strength and childlike directness.

I remember several happy visits in the 1990s to the object-filled little flat on the edge of Notting Hill where she lives and paints, together with her husband of many years, George Swinford. We were supposedly discussing a commission – a small painting that I wanted her to do as an anniversary present for my wife. Over tea and cakes – and all the eager solicitude of proper Jewish hospitality – she deftly turned aside my various suggestions for the picture, going on to paint a beautiful variation of her ‘Two Lovers’ motif. It remains one of our most cherished possessions.

On the occasion of these visits, George was always absent, though I sometimes

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met him on the doorstep, departing as I arrived. I feared that he might have been banished to wander the streets, but Dora claimed that he was making his regular round of the local junk shops in search of antique frames that she might recycle for her pictures. (And indeed the clever use - or re-use - of old frames is one of the distinctive devices that lends to Dora’s work a sense of timelessness.)

The details of the commission, however, were only a small part of our talk. There were bigger subjects: life, love, religion, William Blake, the Dalai Lama, her personal fusion of a Jewish cultural background with a Buddhist spiritual path. She talked of her childhood in Paris and her experiences in London during the ‘60s. She expressed the shock – and even concern – that I had never taken LSD. Everything though - the physical and the metaphysical - was treated in the same direct, engaging, matter-of-fact way, its importance always understood but never overstressed.

It seemed to me a unique way of looking at the world: open, accepting, inquisitive and – I suppose – childlike. And it is this vision that informs and sustains her art with its rare quality of naïve directness and truth.

Like the pictures of the ‘Douanier’ Rousseau, Dora Holzhandler’s art comes from within. And so, happily, there is no chance of it getting ‘better’ any time soon.

Matthew Sturgis is the author of highly-praised biographies of Aubrey Beardsley and Walter Sickert, and monographs on the contemporary painters, Abigail McLellan and David Whitaker. He is currently working on a biography of Oscar Wilde.

4. Mother and Children in Spring in the Park, oil on canvas, 2011, 80 x 60 cm

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Dora Holzhandler Agi Katz I have known Dora for over thirty years. When I first met her, I was working at the Ben Uri Gallery in Soho and her work fitted one of the two main criteria for artists exhibiting there: to be Jewish or the theme of work being Jewish. She, of course, qualified on both counts.

In any other respect, Dora does not fit into any defined category. This is precisely the reason why I value and love her work. She is her own master who has never tried to fit into any art movement or style. Her strength is from within which is so admirably apparent in all her work.

Contrary to popular belief, Dora did go to art school. She was trained at the St John’s Wood Anglo-French Art Centre between 1948 and 1950, which was a very special place – following the Parisian pattern of École de la Grande Chaumière where artists were invited to drop in for certain sessions. The great quality of this art school was that after the difficult times following the war years, it helped introduce ‘continental’ avant-garde culture to British students. French artists – such as Léger, Lurçat and Lhôte – as well as Spanish painters living in Paris, like Clavé and Dominguez – exhibited, and also gave classes and ‘critique’ of the students' work. What other art school in London could boast such a rich and original programme and curriculum for students? None. The fact that Dora was fortunate enough to attend during such a seminal period of this establishment (sadly closed due to financial problems in 1951) had a major impact on her work, which was first most positively noticed here by Victor Pasmore.

Dora was the first person who ever talked to me about the short-lived but glorious existence of the Anglo-French Art Centre - which culminated in 2010 in a much acclaimed exhibition at the Boundary Gallery.

She has always been a thoroughly honest artist. This means that she is neither an ‘outsider’ nor a ‘naïve’ or ‘primitive’ painter. Nor is she typically Jewish or Buddhist in her choice of subject matter. She is authentic because she only paints themes that touch her profoundly, emotionally and spiritually.

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There is so much warmth and genuine empathy in her works. She creates an enchanting atmosphere revealing her inner world without it being at all precious or artificially contrived. So much of her subject matter concerns her family, or, rather, the universal nature of the family. This has always been the focus of her life. For instance, the loss of a beloved granddaughter touched her deeply – and she created works during the period of mourning which show how deeply she was touched by this tragedy.

The other thing I like about Dora’s oeuvre is that she has always experimented with different media: when I visited her some years ago, she showed me her ceramics which amounted to painted sculpture. They were beautiful but, to my knowledge, they had been shown hardly at all. The way she lives is art in itself – her home exudes an atmosphere of quiet rejoicing and moving spirituality.

Agi Katz is Director of the Boundary Gallery in London August 2014

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5. Kiss, oil on board, 2009, 30 x 23.5 cm

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6. The Doll Shop, oil on canvas, 2009, 50.5 x 40.5 cm

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Dora Holzhandler Jan Dunn It must have been a summer in the late nineties; I was living in north London and popped over to Hampstead for a stroll and a coffee with some friends. We wandered past a gallery, and were simultaneously stopped in our tracks by these extraordinary paintings and drawings in the window. We all had the same reaction, one simply of joy. The art made us smile.

To this day, my first impression of the work hasn't changed. I bought my first Dora that day, La Toilette (1998). I decided on this pastel because it reminded me of my mum at her dressing table putting her make-up on when I was a child. It actually looks like my Mum but it resembles Dora too.

In my capacity as a filmmaker, I was fortunate enough to make a short film about Dora in 2002. I spent a fair bit of time with Dora and her husband, George, joining them on several days retreat to Samye Ling, a Buddhist monastery in a part of Scotland that Dora refers to as the ‘empty and enchanted hills of Eskdalemuir’. We all enthusiastically threw ourselves into the spiritual experience, and I met and filmed Dora’s godson who was a monk there. Our mutual interest and drive from our spiritual perspectives leads me to confess my favourite Dora painting is her portrait of Sister Wendy Beckett.

I am happy to say that Dora and I became friends during this period and I would often visit her and George at their home in London. She is a wonderfully special, wise and entertaining companion; we’d talk about everything - no subject is ever taboo. And she and George have some great stories of what they got up to in the fifties and sixties. Everything that is Dora is in her paintings.

Jan Dunn is a screenwriter and film director August 2014

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7. Mother and Child in Rose Garden, oil on canvas, 2012, 40.5 x 30.5 cm

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Dora Holzhandler Satish Kumar A lot of contemporary art comes with a body, but without the soul. In vibrant contrast, Dora Holzhandler's beautifully interwoven images of human ďŹ gures, owers, trees, birds and animals have a deep meaning, a soulfulness which speaks warmly to the viewer. Her art is rooted in the pattern of this intimacy of humanity in contact with and at one with nature, and also in her profoundly felt experience of life. Her art is never art for art's sake but rather art for the sake of spirit. Her work refreshes the mind, the body and the imagination. She rises beyond divisions between people; she sees the unity in humanity.

Satish Kumar is Editor-in-Chief of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine www.resurgence.org August 2014

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8. Nursery School, oil on canvas, 2013, 56 x 40.5 cm

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9. Lady Arranging Lilies, oil on canvas, 2013, 50.5 x 40.5 cm

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10. Lovers in St Ives, oil on canvas, 40.5 x 50.5 cm

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11. Mother and Child in Spring, oil on canvas, 2014, 50.5 x 40.5 cm

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12. Lovers with Winter Sun, oil on board, 1995, 30.5 x 22.5 cm

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13. Young Man Asleep, oil on board, 2004, 25.5 x 30.5 cm

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14. Lovers Asleep, oil on canvas, 2013, 59.5 x 60 cm

15. Rabbi Reading Kabbalah, oil on canvas, 2013, 91.5 x 60.5 cm

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16. Little Girl with Peacock, oil on board, 2003, 30.5 x 25.5 cm

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17. Child in Park, oil on board, 2000, 24 x 19 cm

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18. Rabbi Studying, oil on canvas, 50.5 x 40.5 cm

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19. Lovers in Summer, oil on canvas, 2012, 70.5 x 91 cm

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20. Nigel in Spring, oil on canvas, 2013, 60 x 59.5 cm

21. Nigel in Summer, oil on canvas, 2014, 60 x 59.5 cm

22. Nigel in Autumn, oil on canvas, 2014, 60 x 59.5 cm

23. Nigel in Winter, oil on canvas, 2014, 60 x 59.5 cm

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24. Nigel Kennedy, watercolour & pastel,

2013, 42 x 29.5 cm

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25. Klezmer Player, oil on board, 1997, 35 x 25 cm

26. Mother and Children with Lilies, oil on canvas, 2011, 91 x 70.5 cm

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28. Young Girl with Apple Tree gouache, 1999, 30 x 28.5 cm

27. Self Portrait, oil on board, 1978, 20.5 x 16.5 cm

29. Synagogue, Glasgow gouache, 1991, 36 x 26 cm

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30. Lovers in Autumn, pastel, 2013, 29.5 x 42 cm

31. Mother and Child, pastel, 2013, 31 x 29.5 cm

32. Winter Sun, watercolour, 2013, 31 x 22.5 cm

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33. The Kiss, pastel, 2013, 42 x 29.5 cm

35. Mother and Child, pastel, 2013, 42 x 29.5 cm

35. Lady Bathing in Rock Pool

36. Lovers by Moonlight, pastel, 2013, 42 x 29.5 cm

watercolour & pastel, 2013, 42 x 29.5 cm,

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The artist in front of a poster for a theatrical adaption of an Isaac Bashevis Singer story, performed at The National Theatre, Warsaw in 2007. The programme for the play was generously illustrated with paintings by Dora Holzhandler.

Dora's father, Sehia Holzhandler, who came from Warsaw, and her mother Ruchla Rochman, from Otwock, a small town near Warsaw, met as refugees in London in 1927, and were married the same year in a synagogue there.

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From The Times Literary Supplement, November 1997

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Letter to Philip Vann from Leonard McComb RA

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I think you're an outstanding artist in every sense of the word. You inspire me. You're a wonderful storyteller in your work. You're so true to yourself; sometimes I look at your paintings – we are lucky to have a couple of your paintings, as you know – and I like how you never compromise your style or the story you want to tell – and that's a great message for any artist to have. We treasure your paintings very much and anybody who is there today will as well.

Just a word of warning to everyone – if you think of buying one, they're quite addictive because you put them on the wall and they talk to you constantly, the paintings, and you notice something different every time and they are really very special.

Jack Dee Excerpt from the comedian, actor and writer's filmed speech to open the 2011 Dora Holzhandler exhibition at The Goldmark Gallery.

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Dora has devoted her whole life to painting. She has never followed any school or movement but has always demonstrated a complete commitment to expressing herself in her own unique way.

Her paintings have always been about the experience of life in all of its richness. She has a remarkable ability to convey the strength of feeling that exists between a mother and child; between lovers; or simply as felt by someone doing the most innocent and routine of tasks.

Her work always inspires, encourages, aďŹƒrms.

Gareth Thomas Gareth Thomas has been a Tate Trustee since 2010, and is also Deputy Chairman of Save the Children. As Retail Director, he was the longest serving Board member of John Lewis for the ten years up to 2010. Gareth ďŹ rst began collecting Dora's work in the early 1990s, and got to know her and George over the last twenty years or so, particularly through their shared love of St Ives.

August 2014

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A newspaper article and Dora’s speech for her 1994 exhibition at the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, Glasgow

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Catalogue cover for the 2006 exhibition at the Ben Uri Gallery in London

She says, ‘All my paintings have esoteric secrets in them’.

The influences of lifestyle, Jewish and Buddhist religious folklore and imagery, mysticism and almost childlike innocence are all integral parts of what makes Dora Holzhandler the artist and the art she has consistently produced for over 50 years so unique.

David J. Glasser Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum of Art

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Excerpt from article by Philip Vann in Contemporary Art magazine, November 1996

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Dora Holzhandler's beautiful paintings of lovers, family groups, solitary contemplatives, mothers and children and people at home and in the marketplace, are at once movingly intimate and universal in feeling.

In our troubled world, and the current cultural climate in which an overly cerebral, narrowly prescriptive attitude towards art and life often predominate, Dora's Holzhandler's rare, innocent art is welcomed and appreciated by many viewers, who find themselves responding to her paintings with a smile of compassionate self-recognition.

Philip Vann writer on the visual arts

Where to begin?! Dora is a true original, a master of her Art. You might call her work naïve or self-taught, with hints of Chagall and with influences from both Jewish and Buddhist mysticism and ceremony – but this is to miss the point entirely. What Dora portrays is a childlike innocence, a world where simplicity and stillness reign. She shows us our natural state, without pretence, evoking magical landscapes and intimate interiors infused with a profound beauty, wonder and love.

Henry Boxer Gallerist, curator and dealer specialising in Outsider and self-taught art, and is a Director of Raw Vision magazine.

August 2014

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Article from The Christian Science Monitor, Boston MA, December 22nd 1997

Christopher Andreae has written about art since the early 1960s. Since the early ‘90s he has written books about Mary Newcomb, Mary Fedden, Winifred Nicholson and Joan Eardley. He is currently working on a book about Philip Reeves.

He continues to give talks and write articles.

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Jewish Chronicle, May 1992

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Biography 1928

Dora Holzhandler born in Paris on 22nd March to Polish Jewish refugee parents, Sehia and Ruchla. Dora was fostered at a few months old and spent time in Normandy.

1975/76 Wintered in St. Ives, Cornwall then moved back to London where she and George still live today.

1980 -2000

Extensive travelling abroad brought Dora to places like Thailand, India, New York, Israel and Finland.

1933

Reunited with her mother in Paris.

1995

1934

The Holzhandler family move to Dalston, London.

Death of Athene, Hermione's daughter at age six.

1996

Dora visits the Opening of The Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, then to the Tibetan Buddhist Holy Island off the Scottish coast to plant a rose tree in memory of Athene.

1997

Dora Holzhandler by Philip Vann is published by Lund Humphries, London and The Overlook Press, New York.

2002

1948/50 Dora returned to London where she attended the Anglo-French Art Centre.

Dora, with husband George and granddaughters Eve and Tara, travel to Dharamsala, India for an audience with His Holiness The Dalai Lama of Tibet.

2004

Visit to Paris.

1950

2005

Visits to St Ives and Spain.

2006

Major Retrospective exhibition at Ben Uri Gallery, London.

2013

Painted cd cover for Nigel Kennedy.

1939

Evacuated to Norfolk.

1940

Returned to London and attended North East London Emergency Secondary School.

1941

Moved to Suffolk with mother where she attended the West Suffolk County School, Bury St Edmunds.

1946/48 Lived in Paris where she studied French literature at the Sorbonne and art at La Grande Chaumière.

Dora married George Swinford on the 11th September. They have three daughters: Amalie (b.1951), Hepzibah (b.1956), Hermione (b.1966).

1971/75 Lived at Allanton, a country house in Dumfries, Scotland.

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Selected Exhibitions 1949

Young Contemporaries, RBA Galleries, London

1954

Beaux Arts Gallery, London

1958

John Moores exhibition, Liverpool

1960

Chenil Gallery, London, one-woman exhibition

1962

Portal Gallery, London, one-woman exhibition

1979

Spirit of London, Royal Festival Hall, London

1980

Crane Arts, London, one-woman exhibition

1984

New Frontiers of Naïve Art in Europe, Royal Festival Hall, London

1985

Crane Kalman Gallery, London, one-woman exhibition Beaux Arts, Bath, one-woman exhibition Ben Uri Art Society, London First American Exhibition: Dora Holzhandler - Paintings and Watercolours, Graham Modern Gallery, New York, one-woman exhibition

1986

Peintres Naïfs Britanniques, Musée Municipal, Carcassonne; Galerie Paul Valéy, Sète; Galerie de Salles, Nîmes; Musée Fabre, Montpellier

1987

Galerie Antoinette, Paris Dora Holzhandler: Paintings of Jewish Life, Rona Gallery, London, onewoman exhibition

1989

Dora Holzhandler: Paintings of a Jewish Childhood and a Visit to Israel, Rona Gallery, London, one-woman exhibition

1990

Beaux Arts, Bath, one-woman exhibition

1964-68 Crane Arts, London, mixed exhibitions.

1967

Grosvenor Gallery, London

1971

Langton Gallery, London, one-woman exhibition

1972

Naïve Art from the Collection of Dr and Mrs Arthur H Sams, Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles

1973

Langton Gallery, London, one-woman exhibition

1976

Galerie de Beerenburght, Holland Langton Gallery, London, one-woman exhibition

1977

London University Langton Gallery, London, one-woman exhibition

1978-87 Rona Gallery, London, mixed exhibitions

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1996

Works on Paper, Holland Gallery, London, one-woman exhibition

Boundary Gallery, London Beaux Arts, Bath, one-woman exhibition Piano Nobile, London, Christmas exhibition

1997

Dora Holzhandler: Glimpses from a Jewish Life, The Sternberg Centre, London, one-woman exhibition Dora Holzhandler: Spring in Paris, Rona Gallery, London, one-woman exhibition Works on Paper, Bowmoore Gallery, London, one-woman exhibition

Jewish Museum, London, one-woman exhibition Rona Gallery, London, one-woman exhibition Piano Nobile, London, one-woman exhibition Beyond Life and Death, Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh

1998

Judy Saslow Gallery, Chicago, one-woman exhibition Outsider Art exhibition, Orleans House, Richmond Works on Paper, Zebra Gallery, London, one-woman exhibition

1999

Angels and Demons, Jewish Museum, London, one-woman exhibition Goddesses, Lovers, and Rabbis, Piano Nobile, London, one-woman exhibition

2000

Wren Gallery, Burford, Oxfordshire, one-woman exhibition

2001

Dora Holzhandler, New Paintings and Works on Paper, Piano Nobile, London, one-woman exhibition

2004

The Dance of Life and Love, Piano Nobile, London, one-woman exhibition

Rona Gallery, London, one-woman exhibition Festival of Jewish Culture, part of ‘Glasgow ‘90’, one-woman exhibition 1991 1992

1993

1994

1995

Naivistit Iittalassa '93, Finland, Guest Artist Works on Paper, Holland Gallery, London, one-woman exhibition Watercolours and Ceramics, Rebecca Hossack Gallery, one-woman exhibition Paintings in Gouache, Rona Gallery, London, one-woman exhibition L'Chaim! to Life!: The Jewish Year in the Art of Dora Holzhandler, St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, Glasgow, one-woman exhibition L'Chaim! to Life!: The Jewish Year in the Art of Dora Holzhandler, Jewish Museum, Manchester

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2005

The Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, one-woman exhibition

2006

Paintings from St Ives to Jerusalem, Piano Nobile, London Retrospective Exhibition, Ben Uri Gallery, London Jewish Museum of Art

2007

Clark Art, Hale, Cheshire, one-woman exhibition

2008

Lovers in Cornwall and Other Paintings, Piano Nobile, London, one-woman exhibition

2010

The St John's Wood Art School & The Anglo-French Art Centre, Boundary Gallery, London

2011

Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham, one-woman exhibition

2011

Hester Fine Art, Leeds, one-woman exhibition

2011

Gallery 49, Bridlington, Yorks, one-woman exhibition

2012

Sylvester Fine Art, London one-woman exhibition

2014

Celebrating the Human Narrative, GINA Gallery of International Naïve Art, Tel Aviv, Israel

Work in Public Collections Brighton Art Gallery and Museum Musée d'Art Naïf Anatole Jacovsky, Nice Ben Uri Gallery - The London Jewish Museum of Art The Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow The Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel The Museum of London The Nuffield Foundation The St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, Glasgow The Sternberg Centre, London

Work in Private Collections The late Sir Charles Chaplin, The Duke and Duchess of Bedford, The Earl and Countess of Denbigh, Lady Hunloke, Professor John Cassels, Sam Wanamaker, The late Josef Herman, Edna O’Brien, Alan Ayckbourn, Vincent Price, Rod Steiger, Anthony Petullo, Jenny Page, Sue Perkins, Vanessa Feltz, Maureen Lipman, Jack Dee.

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Dora Holzhandler

Philip Vann Philip Vann has known, and written about Dora Holzhandler and her art since 1984. He curated the exhibition L'Chaim! To Life! The Jewish Year in the Art of Dora Holzhandler for The St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, Glasgow in 1994 and The Jewish Museum, Manchester in 1995. He curated an exhibition of her work for The Jewish Museum, London in 1997, at which his monograph Dora Holzhandler (published by Lund Humphries, London and The Overlook Press, New York) was launched. Over the years, he has written many articles and catalogue essays on the artist. He is author of the highly acclaimed 2004 book, Face to Face: British Self-Portraits in the Twentieth Century, and numerous books on modern British and Irish artists.

Article page 52 by Adam Jacques. Reprinted with permission from the April 14th, 2013 issue of The Independent on Sunday. Portrait by Jean Goldsmith. Š 2013 Independent Print Limited.

Article page 54 by Christopher Andreae. Reprinted with permission from the December 22, 1997 issue of The Christian Science Monitor. Š 1997 The Christian Science Monitor (www.CSMonitor.com). Image retrieved from ProQuest Historical Newspapers produced by ProQuest CSA LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Other articles are reprinted with permission from the publishers.

Dora Holzhandler

Some Comments About The Artist ‘All of Dora Holzhandler’s paintings possess an ineffable tenderness, they make us recall our childhoods, our myths, our roots, and if we have severed from these things, they make us long for them in a palpable way. They are little expanses of sweetness and peace.

Dora is that rare thing – a mother and child in one, as an artist she captures the apparent simplicity of life and infuses it with a depth I find eerie.’

Edna O’Brien

‘For Dora Holzhandler life often seems to be a dance. Or a feast.

Or the two together. Certainly a happy place, full of colour and movement. And yet, in a way, repose is the keynote of her art. . . .

[She is] sophisticated, yes. But working with a curious directness which can only come from some sort of divine innocence.’

John Russell Taylor The Times art critic

‘Dora’s paintings are alive and will last; they are an expression of an inner experience, not a display of outward show. And what a luminous experience they represent . . . the core of each of her pictures is the feeling within it – the note her work strikes, which rings out a telling life of our times.’

Julian Spalding formerly Director of Glasgow Museums

‘. . . her method of painting is that of the pattern-maker, oriental in origin, colourful as a Persian illumination, always brilliant but never harsh. These are pictures invented by a mother but painted by a child – a sophisticated but immensely amiable child.’

Eric Newton leading British art historian, The Guardian

‘Holzhandler’s images of childhood bliss have made her one of the country’s most popular artists.’

The Guardian

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