Hans Feibusch

(1898 Frankfurt, Germany – 1998 London, England) Immigrated to England 1933

Painter, muralist and sculptor Hans Feibusch was born into a Jewish family in Frankfurt, Germany in 1898. After serving in the First World War, he studied painting in Berlin, winning the Prix de Rome and travelling to Italy, where he admired Italian Renaissance mural paintings, before completing his studies in Paris. Upon his return to Germany, as a member of the Frankfurt Künstlerbund, he co-designed a series of murals. After winning the Prussian State Prize for Painting in 1930, he aroused Nazi antagonism; his pictures were publicly burned, and he was forbidden to paint. He found refuge in Britain in 1933, joining his British fiancée in London.

In 1934 Feibusch participated in the Exhibition of German-Jewish Artists’ Work at the Parsons Gallery, London, organised by German-Jewish émigré dealer Carl Braunschweig (Charles Brunswick) to highlight artists suffering persecution under the Nazi regime. Later that year, he held the first of five solo shows at the Lefevre Galleries, London, and exhibited regularly with the London Group (until 1939). In 1937 his work was included in the notorious touring Nazi Entartete Kunst (‘degenerate’ art) show, and in 1938 riposte at the New Burlington Galleries in London.

Following his first public mural commission in England in 1937, Feibusch was championed by Dr George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, and executed some 35 Church of England commissions, including for Chichester Cathedral, becoming Britain’s most prolific muralist. In 1973 he was also commissioned by Holocaust survivor Rabbi Hugo Gryn, to execute five panels for the Stern Hall of the West London Synagogue (now in the Ben Uri Collection on long-term loan to St. Bonifatius Church, London, courtesy of the German Embassy London).

Feibusch exhibited widely including at the Royal Academy (from 1944), the Ben Uri Gallery, including solo exhibitions (1970, 1977), and at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (1995). In the 1970s, forced to abandon painting after his eyesight began to fail, he took up sculpture. Although he had converted to Anglicanism in the 1960s, in his later years he reverted to his Jewish faith.

Hans Feibusch died in London, England in 1998 and his estate was bequeathed to Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. His work is also held in other UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection, Dudley Museums Service and Tate.

Hans Feibusch, Power, 1933

Feibusch uses this dramatic vertical format and pyramidal structure to depict an image of violence and oppression. Created in 1933, the year he left Germany after his pictures were publicly burned and he was forbidden to paint, it is a harrowing depiction of a victim at the mercy of two oppressors, who close in upon him from both sides, their fists raised menacingly above his head. The bold yellow is the only colour in an otherwise subdued colour scheme with areas of brown and white chalk on brown paper. In another image, entitled Star of David, created in the same year, and using a similar composition, a lone male figure is shown with hands upraised in an attitude of supplication or horror with a flaming Star of David on a backdrop behind him.

Hans Feibusch, The Circus Trainer, 1935

Two years after Power, in 1935, Feibusch re-employed the same dramatic vertical format and pyramidal structure to create an ostensibly more playful, celebratory circus image but one that still highlights an ambiguous, coercive relationship in which the horse performs at the behest of his master’s raised whip hand.

Gouache on board

97 x 71 cm

Private Collection © The Werthwhile Foundation

The Prodigal Son, 1943

152.5 x 66 cm

Oil on canvas

Private Collection

© The Werthwhile Foundation

Hans Feibusch, The Prodigal Son, 1943

In 1943, in a third vertical picture, Feibusch further narrowed his canvas, compressing and elongating the composition to focus on the two intertwined figures at its centre. Here, he returns to the familiar New Testament parable of The Prodigal Son, from the gospel of Luke, one of a number of biblical stories that he often explored as a prominent and prolific Church of England muralist. Here, the father’s loving forgiveness as he lays a gentle hand upon the kneeling figure of his wayward but repentant son, is a complete reversal of the first image of power and oppression. The light he holds aloft is an allegory for love and forgiveness.