Search results for ""Ben Uri Gallery and Museum""

Ben Uri Gallery and Museum was founded 100 years ago in July 1915 in Whitechapel in London's East End by Russian-Jewish émigré Lazar Berson and likeminded, mostly émigré, artists and craftsmen, who were unable to access the cultural bastions of the British art establishment. From its inception as an Art Society in 1915, steeped in a vibrant Yiddish culture, to its position today as the only specialist Jewish museum of art in Europe working wholly in the mainstream, Ben Uri's unique international collection has grown to more than 1,300 artworks across a wide range of subjects and media, created by more than 380 artists, primarily (but not exclusively) of Jewish origin and from 35 countries.

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Marking the remarkable century of Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, from humble beginnings in London's East End in 1915 to a fully-fledged mainstream art museum, under its banner 'Art, Identity and Migration', this publication vividly illustrates rarely-seen masterworks from its collection by some of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, including Soutine, Chagall, Auerbach, Bomberg, Kitaj and Kossoff. Further highlights include the 'Whitechapel Boys'; Les Peintres Juifs de L'Ecole de Paris, Official War artists from both conflicts; mid-century émigrés influencing the direction of the arts, and contemporary artists making ground-breaking work across new media. This unique collection, primarily of artists born into the Jewish faith, many shaping modern British, European and American art history, represents a distinct visual survey of artistic and social life in Britain and the cultural heritage of British Jewry. A range of texts provides a fascinating context for a collection born 'Out of Chaos'.

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Czech Routes features the work of 21 painters, printmakers and sculptors, many of whom fled to Britain as racial and political refugees from National Socialism and marks the 80th anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia on 15th March 1939. Also represented are works by subsequent generations of Czechoslovak artists including Irena Sedlecka, who fled her country’s totalitarian Communist regime in the 1960s, as well as those who, between the 1970s and 1990s, have made the positive decision to immigrate to Britain to study and develop professionally. Czech Routes showcases work drawn primarily from the Ben Uri Collection alongside those from important private collections. Featured artists include: Franta Belsky, Jacob Bornfriend, Dorrit Epstein (aka Dekk), Frederick Feigl, Leo Haas, Walter Herz, Anita Mandl, Emil Orlik, Irena Sedlecka, and Walter Trier, in addition to contemporary multidisciplinary artists Tereza Bušková, Míla Furstová and Tereza Stehlíková.

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Becoming Gustav Metzger, produced in association with The Gustav Metzger Foundation, is the first publication to examine the little-known formative years of refugee artist and activist Gustav Metzger (Nuremberg, Germany, 1926-London, England, 2017). Generously supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Association for Art History, Becoming Gustav Metzger includes original texts by Stephen Bann CBE (Emeritus Professor, University of Bristol), Andrew Wilson (Senior Curator Modern & Contemporary British Art, and Archives at Tate Britain), Dr. Elizabeth Fisher (Leverhulme Research Fellow, Northumbria University), Mathieu Copeland (independent curator and author of Gustav Metzger: Writings 1953-2016), and the curators. Fully illustrated, it also includes colour reproductions of rarely seen drawings and paintings from this crucial early period, as well as early abstract works on board and cardboard, and a kodak box. Together they chart Metzger’s artistic journey from figuration to abstraction prior to the development of his later radical auto-destructive practice.

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