Boris Aronson and the Yiddish Theatre at the Ben Uri Gallery

Two Hasids, costume design, 1926

Boris Aronson designed scenes, costumes and lighting for some of Broadway's most successful musicals including Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Company, Follies and A Little Night Music. He also designed the sets for for Mikhail Baryshnikov's production of the Nutcracker and picked up numerous awards over his long theatre career in the United States. However, his career started long before most of these musicals were written and included success as a writer, painter and costume designer. He was also a leading light in the hugely influential Kultur Lige, a Jewish artists' organisation founded in his home town of Kiev in 1918. His achievements in New York's Yiddish Theatre in the 1920's and 1930's are the subject of the current exhibition at my favourite London gallery - the Ben Uri in St. John's Wood. 

I first saw this exhibition "Ben Aronson and the Yiddish Theatre" at  the Tel Aviv branch of the Minotaur Gallery a few years ago.  The exhibition covers his early years in the Ukraine as an apprentice to the designer and avant-garde artist Aleksandra Exter, as well as a sojourn in Berlin before arriving in New York in 1923. Exter had a lifelong influence on him and recognising his desire to design stage scenery, invited him to assist her in the design of sets for the Moscow premiere of Romeo and Juliet in 1920. 

The Kultur Lige was established to promote Yiddish culture. It drew membership and support from writers, artists and various cultural figures with branches being established in almost 100 towns and villages in the Ukraine. The Lige established schools, childcare centres, evening classes for adults and children, music clubs and drama classes with the objective of developing a "new Jew" who could easily combine the qualities of universal and Jewish culture. Over the period of its lifetime it included amongst others Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky, Josef Tchaikov, Nathan Altman, Issakhar-Ber Ryback and Sara Shor - many of whom were Aronson's friends and fellow students of Exter. Aronson managed the committee that organised the Lige's first exhibition in Kiev in early 1920. The exhibition included two of his own works which unfortunately have not survived.

At the end of 1921 he moved to Moscow, continued studying and painting and frequenting the theatre, being particularly impressed and influenced by the experimental work of Vsevolod Meyerhold and Alexander Tairov. More importantly he studied closely the sets and costumes of their productions including those designed by Chagall, describing Chagall's mural in the Jewish Chamber Theatre as "the best of his works". Together with Exter, they had a lasting influence on Aronson - not least their devotion to Constructivism. This is reflected in his 1927 design for the cover of Der Hammer, a socialist magazine in New York.

Costume for Baruch Agadati's oriental dance, 1923

In 1922 he moved again, this time to Berlin which was by then host to a large emigre Russian and Jewish artistic community. During his year in Berlin he published two books - Contemporary Graphic Jewish Art and a work on Marc Chagall. So, by the age of 24 he was an accomplished artist, writer and organiser, but more was to come. In Berlin he met and worked with the dancer Baruch Agadati, a pioneer of avant-garde choreography (and who went on to be a pioneering Israeli film maker!) who attempted a synthesis of ancient folk dances and modern ballet. Aronson produced various sketches for Agadati's dances as well as designing costumes for him. 

In November 1923, Aronson arrived in New York with what he described as "awkward luggage...some drawings, two books, a pair of socks, a membership in a union of German artists, paintbrushes, crowded emotions, little money and less English". Being fluent in Yiddish enabled him to quickly find work - New York being one of the world centres of the language during the 1920's. His initial work involved book cover design, illustrations for children's books and covers for Der Hammer. His work during this period exhibits his continuing commitment to Jewish content and also to the principles of Constructivism. Several items from this period are included in the exhibition including some of the books and magazines - one of the highlights for me.

Cover design for Der Hammer magazine, 1927

He also continued to write in Yiddish magazines including articles about theatre design and when the Jewish Theatre Society opened "Unzer Teater" (Our Theatre) in 1924 he was appointed principle stage designer. The theatre was housed in a small building in the Bronx - then heavily Jewish. Aronson later wrote that "Out of seventy Yiddish theatres in New York, I ended up in a tiny theatre in the Bronx...(where) no-one knew for sure if they would be paid or not, but they had an adventurous spirit and were concerned with the experimental". They were indeed and his work for the costume and stage designs of two of the theatre's three productions "Night and Day" and "The Last Result" are on display at the Ben Uri and show just how experimental those times were. Strapped for cash, Aronson made use of different fabrics and colours in the actors' costumes to create a mood or to highlight the personality of a character. For example, the costume for "the devil" is dominated by grey and black for mood whilst the crimson lining of his coat is a reference to the fires of hell. The plays were well received including by non Jewish American critics.

He went on to work at two more Yiddish theatres - the Schildkraut and Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theatre, achieving particular fame at the latter where he designed the revival of the Yiddish classic The Ten Commandments in 1926. Aronson's time in the Yiddish theatre ended soon afterwards with his desire to appeal to a broader audience taking him to Broadway in 1932 and to several decades of success.

Design for The Circus 1926

This son of a rabbi from small town Ukraine ended up a very long way from home but always acknowledged the influence of his formative years. Born in a time and place that produced many outstanding artists, significant numbers of whom were Jewish, Boris Aronson was one of those occasional figures that are able to excel in many fields, in his case painting, writing, costume and set design. This incredible set of skills is something rarely seen today. The exhibition runs until June 30th - go and see it! The Ben Uri Gallery, still looking for a home worthy of its collection, is also exhibiting some of the treasures from its permanent collection including works by Soutine, Grosz and London's own "Whitechapel Boys" including Mark Gertler, Isaac Rosenberg and David Bomberg. All the more reason to visit. 

Stage design for Bronx Express, 1925

You might also like these posts -

The Moscow avant-garde, constructivist architecture and the Tretyakov Gallery

Dodo Burgner - the inspiration of decadence at the Ben Uri Gallery

Soutine at the Ben Uri Gallery

Journey Into A Fog - London in the 1950's

The Inspiration of Decadence - last year's Ben Uri Gallery exhibition of the work of Dodo Burgner was  my favourite art show of the year. As well as focussing on the wonderful Dodo, a number of her contemporaries were referred to or had works included in the exhibition. When I visited, I picked up a catalogue for an Honor Oak Gallery exhibition from 2005 of the works of Margareta Berger-Hamerschlag (pictured above) called Beyond The Jiving. Rather annoyingly I can't find this small but excellent publication at the moment(!), but I have just finished reading her book Journey Into A Fog - a record of her time as an art tutor in a youth club in Hammersmith.

The book was published in 1956, just two years before her untimely death from cancer. It is almost 60 years old now, but the issues it tackles are more alive than ever and demonstrate that young people with  social and behavioural problems are not a new phenomenon. Berger-Hamerschlag was from an assimilated Viennese Jewish family and left Austria before the second world war. An extremely cultured woman and an accomplished artist, her initial shock at the behaviour, disposition and views of her working class charges features strongly at the beginning of the book.

They disappoint her with their obsessions with their appearance - cheap, glitzy uniformity supposedly imitating their favourite Hollywood stars. They shock her with their causal approach to crime - several of the young people have been "bound over" for theft and for casual violence whilst others have served time for varying offences. She despairs of the young women - most of whom only come to the youth club to meet boys and don't want to do or learn anything other than the words to their favourite pop songs and on the rare occasions they do become interested in something, they invariably do not see it through.

But, as her story progresses, we see her make strenuous efforts to broaden the horizons of these young people. They try lino-cutting, life drawing, sculpture, sewing, weaving and making their own clothes - with varying levels of success and participation! She learns more about these children - many of whom are only 14 or 15 years old and are responsible for their families where parents have left, died or are too sick to work.  Many of them work in factories, cafes or shops for very little money before coming home to cook, clean and look after siblings. Few of them  believe they will ever accomplish anything else. Change a few of the details and you could be reading about today. But unlike several of the other tutors at the club, Berger-Hamerschlag does not give up on the young people, she perseveres with those who show little interest, winning over one or two, often to be disappointed when they later let her down or disappear. She buys materials from her own pocket when the local authority is unwilling or unable to provide the money. And she intervenes with other agencies to try to get help for the young people at greatest risk or in most need.

There are also moments of humour, several in relation to use of language. She shows them a picture of Botticell's Primavera, only to be told they don't thin se is much of a looker, and wondering why he thought this Vera was "prima" - prima being a term for all things marvellous amongst young people at that time.


Journey into a Fog is an eye-opener for those who hark back to the 1950's as a time of innocence. Times were different that's true - National Service is mentioned for example, as is capital punishment. But times weren't that different with concerns about crime, unemployment, poverty and young people being preyed on by adults. With a little modernisation, the press reviews and other comments on the back cover of the book, written in the 1950's could also easily appear in today's press. The Times Educational Supplement said "How our civilisation has produced this residue layer in which all its disbelief in itself is somehow deposited is a question for those who can answer such conundrums. But how to help the individual boy or girl out of it is a practical question which can be answered..." It seems that we are still looking for the answers.

Journey Into A Fog is a little difficult to get hold of - its out of print but is sometimes available on Amazon. The illustrations are by the author. The illustration reproduced above is not from the book but is clearly inspired by the author's experiences at the youth club.

UPDATE - The wonderful staff at the Ben Uri Gallery have contacted me to let me know you can still get copies of the "Beyond The Jiving" catalogue. It is full of examples of Maragareta's work as well as additional information about her life and career. I am very happy to have a new copy! It is well worth picking up on your next visit to the Ben Uri!

Soutine at the Ben Uri Gallery

As I stood in front of Chaim Soutine's "La Soubrette" (waiting maid) yesterday, at London's wonderful Ben Uri Gallery, another visitor asked me what I thought of the painting. I replied that I liked it very much, and that although she looks a bit stern, if you look long enough, she softens up a little. "Mmm, just like my wife" he replied, and moved on.

La Soubrette is the latest in a series of high profile purchases by the Ben Uri, following on from the coup of acquiring Chagall's "Apocalypse en Lilas. Capriccio" painted in 1945 as an immediate response to the Holocaust and Georg Grosz's "Nazi Interrogation" painted at the beginning of that most terrible era.

The current exhibition is entitled "Chaim Soutine and his contemporaries from Russia to Paris" and showcases "La Soubrette". The work, produced in circa 1933 retains some of the earlier characteristics of Soutine's portraits, including the slightly elongated and pointed features of the subject. However "La Soubrette" is sadder than some of the earlier more self assured characters and has a look of resigned disappointment. At the same time, the slight, red mouth and the downcast eyes suggest kindness and acceptance. The picture was purchased with the assistance of the Art Fund, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the V&A's Purchase Grant Fund. 

Soutine was born in 1893 in Smilovichy, a shtetl then in Russia but now in Lithuania. The tenth of eleven children, he displayed an interest in art from an early age but was discouraged by his very poor family. As a teenager he drew the local rabbi, contravening Judaism's prohibition on drawing faces and was badly beaten by said rabbi's son. All ended well for Soutine when he used the substantial financial damages he received to move to Minsk , soon afterwards going on to Vilna (Vilnius) where he studied at the School of Fine Arts. Moving on to Paris in 1913, he worked at the famous La Ruche in the most extreme poverty and with the likes of Chagall, Zadkine, Kremegne, Kisling and Archipenko as neighbours. 

He served for a short time in the First World War before being discharged due to developing the severe stomach problems that would eventually bring about his death. Soutine remained in France for the rest of his life, living outside Paris under an assumed name and false identity card from 1941, but had to travel back to the city in 1943 for emergency medical treatment. He died on 9th August 1943 following an operation for perforated stomach ulcers.

Although Soutine's painting is the focus of the current exhibition, it includes several other works that attracted my attention. The exhibition focuses on the work of the artists referred to as the Ecole de Paris with Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, Mane-Katz and Jankel Adler all being represented. A smaller element of the exhibition includes works from the School of London as represented by Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. There's also a really good (and good value) catalogue too!


One of the great things about the Ben Uri is that every time I go, I discover an artist that I hadn't previously known. This time it was Chana Kowalska. The exhibition includes two of her works from 1934, "Shtetl" shown above and "The Bridge". I find "Shtetl" especially interesting. 

Kowalska, born in 1907 in Wloclawek, Poland, the daughter of a zionist rabbi she worked as a school teacher before moving to Berlin in 1922. Eventually settling in Montparnasse, Paris, she was a politically aware young woman and was active in the Parisian branch of the Kultur-Lige  as well as in Jewish communist circles. Following the German invasion of France, she and her husband, writer Baruch Winogora joined the resistance. Both were arrested, deported and murdered in 1941.

At first glance "Shtetl" shows the enclosed world of the Jewish village as a secure place with brightly painted houses and shops, people carrying water from the pump as well as signs of growing modernisation with maintained and protected trees and footpaths. But there is also a much darker side to this painting. The cart at the top of the picture is driving towards the church dome, but there appears to be no way to leave the shtetl as there is no exit from the street. And are those trees really protected by the fence, or do they indicate how trapped Europe's Jews were at this time? Kowalska would have been well aware of the threat faced by Jewish communities across Europe and the fact that help would not be forthcoming. "The Shtetl" serves as a warning of what was to come. 



Sonia Delaunay was born Sarah Stern in 1885 in Gradizhsk, then in Russia, now in the Ukraine. She made her way to Paris in 1905 to study at the Academie de la Palette, married German collector and art dealer Wilhelm Ude in 1908 through whom she met Picasso, Braque, de Vlaminck and Robert Delaunay. Sonia and Uhde divorced in 1910 and she married Delaunay.  

The Delaunays were strong advocates for abstract art and became members of the Abstract-Creation Group in 1931. Sonia Delaunay survived the second world war and lived on to 1979. The above work is the poster she designed for her second solo show at Galerie Bing in Paris in 1964  and is a wonderful example of her graphic skills and her passion for colour. The Ben Uri exhibition also includes an invitation card for the Galerie Bing show.

And so to my favourite (non-Soutine) work in the exhibition Isaac Lichtenstein's - "The Blind Fiddler", from 1924 (below). Lichtenstein was born in Plonsk, Poland in 1888 and grew up in Warsaw and Lodz. He spent three years at the Bezalel School of Art in Jersusalem from 1908, moving on to Paris in 1911. He served n the Jewish legion at the end of the First World War and then moved on to the USA where he moved into publishing. 

The cubist influenced "Blind Fiddler" employs an often used Jewish motif - the musician - accompanied by a poorly dressed child. The urban backdrop is representative of the living conditions of the urban Jewish working classes throughout the 1920's and 30's which enabled some to move up in society, and to break free of the many restrictions placed on them by the outside world and by the community itself. The converse side of this, and the subject of this picture, was grinding poverty.



I have written about the Ben Uri before - here, here and here. The Gallery has a magnificent collection but is housed in very small premises in St. John's Wood meaning only a very small percentage of this treasure trove can be shown at any one time. The gallery has been looking for more central and larger premises for some time. 

Once again, my favourite London Gallery has staged a thought provoking exhibition that will appeal to a much wider audience than Soutine enthusiasts or people specifically interested in Jewish artists. I understand that this exhibition is an appetiser for a much larger and more in-depth survey of the Ecole de Paris, coming in 2016. I don't know if I can wait that long...

The Ben Uri Gallery - see the collection at home

Regular readers will know that I am a devotee of the Ben Uri Gallery, the London Jewish Museum of Art, currently housed in Boundary Road, Swiss Cottage. I have written about the excellent current Dodo Burgner exhibition as well as the equally impressive Josef Herman exhibition from earlier this year.

The Ben Uri has a wonderful collection of over 1,300 pieces, but the severely cramped space in the gallery means that only a very small number of them can be displayed at any one time. The gallery has been looking for a new, more centrally located and larger home for some time. The search continues, but in the meantime, thanks to the new look website, you can browse through some of the collection's highlights without leaving home!

The new website has a search facility that allows searching by artist's name, leading browsers to a list of holdings by each artist and also to an image of the works listed. This is still work in progress, but its already possible to view about one third of the Ben Uri collection in this way. In addition to this, the website now features a regularly changing slideshow of 32 works from the collection and this is very prominent on the home page.

I spent some time browsing through this large sample from this unique collection, and although a large number of works are still to be included, I was already able to enjoy wide looking at the work of several of my favourite artists.  This includes examples of Whitechapel boy Mark Gertler's work (my favourite - The Rabbi and Rebbetzin from 1914) and good representation of Israeli artists including Moshe Castel (my favourite - Father and Son from 1928 - and by the way there is an excellent museum of his work in Maale Adumim near Jerusalem - well worth a visit), Nahum Gutman (my favourite - Safed) and more contemporary photographic work from Natan Dvir (The Shtetl is Burning, 1972).

The Ben Uri has featured a number of refugee artists in recent years and these too are well represented on the new website, including Martin Bloch (the lovely House in Varengeville Normandy from 1939) and Yankel Adler (Ein Jude from 1926). Each entry gives details of the medium, dimensions, date where known and inscription. Not only is this  a great way of making the collection more widely available, but its also a great tool for art historians, researchers and people who just happen to like Jewish art (or even just art!).

The site also gives details of exhibitions, past, present and future - including a range of images from the current Dodo Burgner show, the gallery's education programme and other useful information. I understand that there are to be further improvements to the site, including additional ways of searching the collection as well as plans to add more information about the gallery's previous exhibitions. Again, good news for researchers and art lovers generally.

The Ben Uri collection is rich, diverse and constantly being developed. Its most recent acquisition is Chaim Soutine's, La Soubrette or the Waiting Maid, purchased with Heritage Lottery Fund monies and grants and donations from other sources including the Victoria and Albert Museum. There are plans to exhibit the painting very soon, so check the new website for details!

Dodo Burgner - The Inspiration of Decadence at the Ben Uri Gallery

The new exhibition at the Ben Uri Gallery - The Inspiration of Decadence - features the work of little known Berlin artist Dorte (Dodo) Burgner. It covers her early work in the Bohemian Berlin of the 1920's and early 1930's as well as her later works as an emigre in London.


Born in February 1907 to a respectable German Jewish family, she demonstrated independence from an early age. Perhaps the best example of this is changing her name to Dodo, saying "I was called Dorte, which is an unsuitable choice for a very dark little Jewish girl". One of three children, she led a sheltered life but her parents ensured she had regular access to art, theatre, cinema, museums, books and music. She claimed they had an unhappy marriage and that her father was distant, but she found solace in her paternal grandmother, Adelheid Wolff. Adelheid who lived with the family, taught Dodo to read from an early age, took the children regularly to the Berlin Zoological Gardens and once temporarily transformed the shop within their building into a gymnastics studio that she rented out! She died in 1919 leaving the 12 years old Dodo devastated.

Dodo's early school years were spent at the municipal lyceum in Wilmersdorf. She was not an outstanding student and was something of a loner. In 1918 she transferred to the Auguste Viktoria School, where her sister Suse had been a classmate of the young Marlene Dietrich. Her school life was occasionally interrupted by the First World War which also brought about  rationing of food and fuel, but which left the family largely untouched. Leaving school in 1922 with ordinary results, she had excelled in only one area - drawing, her mother encouraged her to paint landscapes during the family's summer trips to the mountains. Dodo had other ideas and drew courting couples, suicides and nude nymphs! Shocked, her mother consulted a paediatrician about her, who reported that she had nothing to worry about!

A further struggle with her parents erupted over Dodo's desire to go to art school. A compromise was reached when she agreed to spend a year at "finishing school" to learn household skills, before enrolling at the private Schule Reimann in autumn 1923. She went here because her secondary school grades had been insufficient to gain entry to the State Academy for the Arts. However, Schule Reimann suited her down to the ground when she discovered that it had a "reputation for bad moral behaviour of its students" and that life classes included visits not only to the zoo, but also to night clubs! She was at the Schule until 1926 and during that time had works published in the magazine Form und Farbe whilst others came into the possession of the Liperheide Costume Library, now part of the Berlin State Museum.

Bored with the staid social life of her family, she longed for excitement, dated several men and saw Josephine Baker appear at the Nelson Theatre on Kurfurstendamm, dressed only in a banana skirt. Extremely taken with Ms Baker, Dodo went on to produce a series of drawings of her. Hired to do freelance work upon leaving the Schule in 1926, she was commissioned to make fashion drawings based on swatches of material, for the Michels & Cie fashion boutique, many of which appeared in the store magazine. Well paid and not needing to help her parents financially, she spent freely on taxis, cigarettes with her own name printed on them and somewhat avant-garde attire, including a monocle to avoid wearing glasses!


The exhibition includes several of Dodo's fashion designs from this period, showing elegant hats, scarves and other accessories, drop waist skirts and dresses, several of which are clearly inspired by art deco and jazz age styles as well as a range of theatre costumes and some highly stylised advertising posters for fashion and perfumes. Like many European artists of this period, Dodo was able to excel across a range of disciplines including costume design and graphic art. She also produced a number of expressionist works that bear comparison to those of George Grosz and Otto Dix. It is interesting to consider what impact she might have made had her life not been interrupted by the Second World War and exile, but more of that later.




In 1927, Theodor Wolff, editor of the arts section of the famous Berliner Tageblatt newspaper commissioned her to make full page illustrations and double page spreads for ULK - a satirical magazine, with a circulation of up to 300,000 at its peak. This was an excellent opportunity for her to show off her talents and more than sixty of her illustrations were published in ULK between 1927 and 1929, many of them on the covers or in the centre fold. This was a huge achievement for a young women in her very early twenties and in later years she described this period as the peak of her artistic career. In 1928 she was engaged to design two costumes for a Berlin stage musical called There's Always Something in the Air. One of these costumes was worn by a very young Marlene Dietrich.

The ULK work really is a highpoint of the exhibition, illustrating life in the Weimar Republic in all its decadence. From the same period, Street Scene from 1928 couldn't possibly be anywhere else other than Weimar Berlin, with its depiction of glamour, wealth, decay and menace. The characters could easily inhabit a Grosz work whilst there is also a feeling of the works of Kirchner in this and some of her other works from this period.



During this time she had her first encounter with Dr Hans Burgner, 25 years older than her and a successful lawyer. They met at a party where they talked until the early hours of the morning before Dodo proposed marriage to him. Flattered and surprised, he politely declined but a close relationship soon developed, including many dinners, theatre trips and holidaying together. In summer 1928 whilst Hans was in Italy, Dodo wrote him an ultimatum, marry or forget it. She posted the later late at night, going to the post box wearing only a coat and gloves, but forgot to take her keys, giving her parents quite a surprise when they had to open the door to her!

Hans accepted, they married on his return and spent their honeymoon in Switzerland. Unfortunately, she soon tired of the round of domestic duties and dinner parties and came to realise that they had different personalities, worrying that she could never really share his life. In July 1930, Dodo gave birth to her first child, Anja. Dodo enjoyed the pregnancy but the little girl  cried continuously for most of the first two years of her life, sending her into a deep depression which she tried to resolve with a second child. This time, the pregnancy did not go well and when son Thomas was born in March 1932 she found it hard to bond with him.

The early 1930's heralded deep trauma for Germany's Jewish population, even those as secular and relatively uninvolved in the community as the Burgners. Hitler was elected to power in January 1933 and Dodo began to find it difficult to obtain commissions. In 1934 she returned to drawing, concentrating on illustrating children's books, Bible stories and theatre scenes solely for Jewish publications. Just prior to this, Dodo had met and fallen in love with Doctor Gerhard Adler, who worked under Carl Jung in Zurich. She became pregnant by Adler, but had an abortion. Hans Burgner was aware of this affair and possibly also of an affair with the educationalist and writer Tami Oelfken who later helped the Burgners to leave Germany.

She became pregnant to Adler a second time and again underwent an abortion before leaving her family and moving to Zurich with him. During this time she commenced therapy and produce a number of extremely disturbing works, some of which can be seen in the exhibition. These include a representation of the abortion scene in Madame Does Not Want Children, Death and Accusation, all from 1933. These works show the dark side to her life during this time and represent the feelings of guilt she felt at the abortions and at abandoning Hans and the children. There followed a period where she maintained a relationship with both Adler and Burgner. Throughout this time the restrictions on Germany's Jews began to be implemented. Things came to a head for the Adler/ Burgners when Anja was old enough to start formal school. Hans did not want her to go to a Jewish school and also refused to allow Dodo and Adler to take the children to Palestine, preferring instead to send them in 1936 to his sister, Hedwig, who had a boarding house in London.

Hans remained in Germany whilst Adler acquired rooms a few minutes from away from Dodo. Anxious to marry her, he pressed her to divorce Hans which she did somewhat reluctantly and despite the relationship beginning to cool. No doubt this was because Gerhard was already having an affair with another woman. Dodo was distraught but still married him, only to divorce the following year as he continued the other relationship. 

Dodo's parents followed her to London in 1938, as did her sister Suse and her children. Hans Burgner also came to London following legislation in Germany banning Jewish lawyers from practising. Apart from Hans, they lived in adjoining houses in Finchley. Hans was a regular visitor to the family and in 1944 proposed that as he and Dodo got on so well that they re-marry, which they did, remaining married (although not continuously living together) until Hans' death in 1974, aged 92.  After separating from Adler, Dodo saw him only once more when by chance he enrolled for a art class in Hampstead - the same class that she had enrolled for. He came to the first class and never returned. Adler died in 1988 and Dodo attended his funeral.

After moving to England, Dodo found it hard to obtain commissions - her style was considered too "continental" and for a time she worked designing Christmas cards and illustrations for children's books.  During the war years she also obtained some fashion design work for the John Lewis department store, but never returned to the bohemian style she had worked in, during her time in Berlin. In her later years, Dodo retained an interest in art, regularly visiting Florence with her daughter and travelling extensively in Great Britain. She died on December 22nd 1998, shortly before her 92nd birthday.

The exhibition includes examples of Dodo's work from the early Berlin years, the ULK magazine illustrations, her work for Jewish magazines in 1934-35 and the later works in London. Unlike many German artists of her generation, she was never involved in politics, but I was particularly struck by one of her works entitled Jews Looking Around. It shows three somewhat stereotypical Jewish men standing behind a globe and in the shadow of a swastika. What does it mean? Without the swastika it could almost be a piece of Nazi propaganda - the myth of Jewish world control. The presence of the swastika and the date of the work - 1933 - for me at least, signifies the hopelessness of the Jewish situation in Europe at that time. Three successful men, but without a home, driven out of Germany, but with nowhere to go. Prophetic. 

One of my favourite works in the exhibition is a postcard with New Year's greetings from 1927, featuring Dodo as a 1920's flapper and with a small dog on her shoulder. It shows a young, happy woman at the very beginning of what might have been a glittering career, but who was to suffer from many trials and traumas, both personal and political due to the times she lived in.

I also like the more restrained, but equally stylish catalogue page layouts from 1942 for bags and cushions.They are very much of their time, but still show a keen sense of style - simple but striking, using two colours and a touch of "the continent" to attract English ladies.

The exhibition also features work of other German Jewish emigres who were contemporaries of Dodo's - Frank Auerbach, Margaret Berger-Hamerschlag and Bettina Ehrlich amongst others. The Ben Uri really is a gem amongst London galleries - a small space with a big impact and a great programme of exhibitions and events. And their next exhibition will feature Judy Chicago. It doesn't start until October, so plenty of time to view the Dodo Burgner before then!

Josef Herman - Warsaw, Brussels, Glasgow, London 1938-44

Polish born artist Josef Herman is best known in this country for his paintings of Welsh miners, having lived in Ystradgynlais, South Wales from 1944-1955. The current exhibition at the Ben Uri Gallery in north London covers the years 1938-44 which he spent moving from Warsaw to Brussels to Glasgow and then London, to escape virulent anti-semitism in Warsaw and then the invading Germans in Brussels.

Herman was from a poor background, his father was a cobbler and the family's living conditions are known to have been difficult. This is reflected in his life long interest in and representation of working people in his art. "The cobbler, my father" from 1943 shows the older Herman at work at his bench in a sparse, ill-lit and cold looking room whilst other works depict poor musicians playing for money and the seemingly Chagall influenced "The organ grinder" from 1940-41 with the sallow, sunken cheeked player accompanied by a wise owl adding a strange note of comedy.

One of very few works to have survived from his time in Brussels, "The Gambler" from 1938 shows two intense looking men playing dice in the foreground of the picture with serious drinking going on in the background. Again, the room is sparsely furnished and the drinkers are shown as being small, sad and stooped. Herman was also keen to show more joyful aspects of working class life and the picture "Jews dancing" from 1940 shows a group of shtetl Jews - men and women - dancing to the music of a bearded violinist, one moved to dance on the hastily cleared table.

A number of his paintings have been compared to Chagall's works. Herman was very conscious of this comparison, did not want it and came to dislike it, at a later date, going so far as to destroy several works that he felt were too "Chagall-esque". It is interesting that many of these pictures came in the early 1940's at a time when he would have had little real news of his family still in Poland. Perhaps he was trying to recreate a world that was in the process of being destroyed forever - including, he would come to learn, his entire family. This also sparked the series of works included in the exhibition called "A memory of memories" in which he recreates his childhood and the pre-war Jewish Poland he remembered.

During the first half of the 20th century, a number of artists produced sets or designed costumes for theatre and ballet. Goncharova, Bakst and Rodchenko spring to mind in particular, their work for and with the Ballet Russes. Herman was no exception, but went a step further, conceiving the decor, costumes, set and narrative for a short ballet called "Ballet of the palette". The palette which he described as a "fantasy" focuses on two paint brushes, one large and lazy and the other small and energetic.

Other characters include the colours pink, blue, white and green with the stage acting as a palette. The ballet was performed by the Celtic Ballet Club and surviving photographs show references to the purimspiel that Herman would have been familiar with from his childhood. The ballet was last performed in 1945. With the Ben Uri exhibition, it would be timely for a revival - the ballet is only 30 minutes long, any takers?

Like many emigrees, Herman sought the company of his countrymen during his early days in Britain. In Glasgow he became friends with the Estonian born Jewish sculptor Benno Schotz and was reunited with Jankl Adler, whom he had known in Warsaw. Several Yiddish writers were also in his circle including Itzik Manger who he painted in 1940. This expressionist portrait is my favourite work in the exhibition and fits well Herman's description of Manger - "His face was green, his black eyes shone out from his red eyelids. But his nervous vitality was undiminished. He could be offensive, tender, spiteful, amusing and exciting, but never a solvable as his poetry suggest him to be".

Later on, during his time in London, he became involved in the Ohel cultural organisation which was based in Gower Street in the West End. Ohel (meaning "tent" in Hebrew) sought to provide cultural opportunities and expression for Polish, Yiddish and German speaking refugees and provided a library, meeting rooms, cafe and an impressive programme of concerts, readings and exhibitions. It is likely that Herman would have come into contact here with Bomberg, Bloch and Meidner and it is known that he was familiar with the writer Avraham Stencl, producing his portrait in 1946.

The exhibition records a key period in this artists life and development, recreating a world now lost forever. He went on to live until February 2000, having coped with yet more tragedy in his life with the early death of his daughter in 1972. He was much honoured in his adopted country, being awarded an OBE for his services to British Art and was elected as an Honorary Senior Royal Academician in 1990. Several of his works are held in the Tate Britain gallery.

The Ben Uri Gallery was founded in 1915 by Russian emigre artist Lazar Berson at a Whitechapel Restaurant. Its current home is in Boundary Road, St. John's Wood. It has an extensive and extremely important collection of works by Jewish artists. In its current location it offers a programme of world class temporary exhibitions. The current exhibition, which has an excellent catalogue, runs until March 22nd. For more details check the Gallery website or the Josef Herman Foundation website.

http://www.benuri.org.uk/
http://josefhermanfoundation.org/