Rachel Dickson

When the artist Hugo Dachinger asked to paint the portrait of diarist Wilhelm Hollitscher, a new friendship was born. Both men, refugees from the Nazis, were interned in the Huyton Internment Camp in 1940. However, they refused to let the experience daunt them, with Dachinger manufacturing his art materials from anything to hand and Hollitscher continuing his life-long habit of diary keeping. Hollitscher’s diary provides a vivid account of daily life in the camp along with wider political comment, while Dachinger staged exhibitions of his work in the camp entitled Behind the Wire. Both men found being interned as an ‘enemy alien’ traumatic, but were able to draw strength from the experience. The context is set by three chapters. Professor Charmian Brinson writes about the history of internment and Churchill’s shameful policy to ‘collar the lot,’ Rachel Dickson elucidates Dachinger’s work in the camp, and Ines Newman, the granddaughter of Wilhelm Hollitscher, provides a portrait of her grandfather’s background and life. The book reveals the true experience of life in captivity and is as relevant to today’s injustices as it is an account of unjust treatment in the past.

When the artist Hugo Dachinger asked to paint the portrait of diarist Wilhelm Hollitscher, a new friendship was born. Both men, refugees from the Nazis, were interned in the Huyton Internment Camp in 1940. However, they refused to let the experience daunt them, with Dachinger manufacturing his art materials from anything to hand and Hollitscher continuing his life-long habit of diary keeping. Hollitscher’s diary provides a vivid account of daily life in the camp along with wider political comment, while Dachinger staged exhibitions of his work in the camp entitled Behind the Wire. Both men found being interned as an ‘enemy alien’ traumatic, but were able to draw strength from the experience. The context is set by three chapters. Professor Charmian Brinson writes about the history of internment and Churchill’s shameful policy to ‘collar the lot,’ Rachel Dickson elucidates Dachinger’s work in the camp, and Ines Newman, the granddaughter of Wilhelm Hollitscher, provides a portrait of her grandfather’s background and life. The book reveals the true experience of life in captivity and is as relevant to today’s injustices as it is an account of unjust treatment in the past.

This new monograph on the important and influential 20th-century British artist David Bomberg (1890-1957) accompanies a major new exhibition curated by the authors, due to open at Pallant House, Chichester (Oct 2017, touring to Laing Gallery, Newcastle and Ben Uri Gallery, London.) The monograph is a comprehensive yet succinct account, providing an informed and accessible overview of Bomberg's career and achievements, combining a biographical narrative with an analytical and interpretative approach. It discusses and illustrates Bomberg's five key periods and motifs including early, experimental modernism pre the First World War; War artist's commissions and immediate postwar works; major Jerusalem landscapes; portraiture, and particularly self-portraiture; and the flowering of his mature landscapes. The book is also notable for its inclusion of new material relating to Bomberg's Jewish background, and its sumptuous illustrations.

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'.