JANKEL
goldmark
Jankel Adler (1895-1949) was born in Łódź,
Poland to Jewish parents. He spent time in
Berlin, Paris and Düsseldorf before moving to Britain in 1941. Although influencing a whole generation of British artists, including Robert Colquhoun, Robert MacBryde, John Minton, Keith Vaughan, Prunella Clough, Michael Ayrton and the poet Dylan Thomas, he has not had a major exhibition in the UK for over 50 years. This exhibition covers the British years from 1941 until Adler’s death in 1949.
Catalogue £10
JANKEL ADLER
THE BRITISH YEARS
JANKEL
THE BRITISH YEARS RICHARD CORK
goldmark 2014
2. Woman's Head, Red and Black
JANKEL ADLER THE BRITISH YEARS, 1941-49 By the time he reached Scotland in 1941, Jankel Adler had been exposed to the Second World War battlefields at their most gruelling. A year earlier, at the age of 45, his long abhorrence of Nazi aggression made him join the Polish Army of the West and train as a gunner. But Adler soon became embroiled in the disaster of the Dunkirk campaign, and he left France with a contingent of Polish soldiers. They came to Glasgow, where a troublesome heart condition caused him to be demobbed on health grounds. So he settled for a brief period in this lively and relatively peaceful city, which had become a meeting-place for European immigrants escaping Fascist oppression. Here, Adler renewed his friendship with Josef Herman, a fellow Polish artist who had moved to Glasgow in 1940. ‘It was with Jankel that I could share my more intimate fears’, Herman recalled later with gratitude. ‘These were years of fears. Both of us were Yiddish-speaking, we were both from Poland, hence we could look into each other’s faces with understanding. In the company of others we were a conspiracy of two.’ Herman’s presence in Glasgow undoubtedly helped Adler to recover his strength and resume activity as an artist.
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3. In Commemoration of the Polish Dead II - Girl
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This much-needed and timely Goldmark exhibition testifies to the eloquence of the work he produced in Britain before his early death, near London, in April 1949. Buoyed by exhibitions of his work, first at the Annans’ Gallery in Glasgow with a catalogue foreword by the eminent Scottish painter J.D. Fergusson in 1941, Adler managed to arrive at a powerful and eloquent final phase in his career. The undertow of tragedy running through these images must have been intensified in 1942 when Herman was told, by the Red Cross, that his entire family had been exterminated by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto. Herman suffered a total breakdown and, according to Nini Herman, ‘Jankel Adler stepped in and nursed Josef through those weeks with maternal tenderness. Was it perhaps to heal them both.’ Adler had himself suffered grievously from Nazi persecution. After growing up in the textile town of Łódź, as the eighth of twelve children, he moved to Germany and studied art there during the First World War. The young Adler was regarded as ‘a suspicious alien, to say the least’, and ordered to report to the police once a week as a civil prisoner. But he was highly regarded by his teachers, and after the war returned to Germany where he met many avant-garde artists, including Otto Dix who painted Adler’s portrait in 1926. His own art flourished, especially in Düsseldorf where he won awards and received a commission for a wall painting in the city’s Planetarium. The possibilities offered by abstraction fascinated him more
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and more, especially after Paul Klee became a Professor at the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts in 1931. Adler was given the studio next door to Klee, and the two men became friends. After Klee’s death Adler wrote a perceptive essay in 1942 called ‘Memories of Paul Klee’, where he declared that ‘Klee, when beginning a picture, had the excitement of a Columbus moving to the discovery of a new continent. He had a frightened presentiment, just a vague sense of the right course. But when the picture was fixed and still he saw that he had come the true way, he was happy. Klee, too, set out to discover a new land.’ The same words could be applied to Adler’s work as well. But the rise of Fascism was terrifying, particularly after 1933 when he bravely signed an ‘Urgent Appeal’ by artists and intellectuals warning that ‘we will face the imminent danger of the destruction of all personal and political freedom in Germany.’ Hitler’s success prompted Adler, later the same year, to leave Germany for the last time. After travelling restlessly through Europe, he realised in 1937 that he had been branded as a ‘degenerate artist’ by the Nazis, who removed his work from German museums and included him in the travelling Degenerate Art exhibition, alongside Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka and many others. Adler became depressed, exclaiming: ‘I am so fed up with everything! What kind of worth has a human being?’ Although Adler rallied for a while in the heat and light of
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4. Woman
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5. Interior
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Cagnes-sur-Mer, where he lived and worked from 1938 until 1940, the Nazi persecution worsened. Private collectors, fearful of the Gestapo, even began destroying the paintings and drawings by Adler in their possession. Mercifully, most of the works he went on to produce during the 1940s have survived. The images in this exhibition reveal just how much powerful emotion informs the art Adler made throughout his fruitful British period. The largest painting on display here, Interior, was executed in 1944. He had left Scotland a year earlier, after showing in Glasgow’s experimental New Art Club and then spending a few months in the artists’ colony at Kirkcudbright. London beckoned, despite the horrors of the Blitz. And in 1943 he found a Kensington studio at 77 Bedford Gardens, where two promising young Scottish artists already worked: Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde. Strange figures can be discerned in the darkness of Interior. But Adler leaves them lurking mysteriously in the shadows, behind a table thrusting out towards us over a warm red floor. The figures are so abstract and angular that they have an almost robotic air. In this sense, they may partly reflect Adler’s memories of the soldiers he had witnessed at war, armed and rigidly encased in their defensive uniforms. His experience of the beleaguered battlefields in France would not go away: two of his finest 1940s paintings, now owned by Tate, are called The Mutilated and No Man’s Land.
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Even so, most of the work he produced in Britain does not specifically confront us with identifiable images of men at war. Instead, Adler concentrates time and again on an unknown room. Fascinated by still life, he fills the lower section of one large painting with clusters of fruit, vessels and a cloth laid out on a table-top. The whole assembly looks tempting, and proves that he was not averse to celebrating the pleasures of everyday life. All the same, the view through a window above seems to be telling us that the sun is about to set. So everything here may well be shrouded in darkness very soon. Another still-life painting appears more festive at first. Dominated by a single fish lying on a plate, it is elsewhere alive with abstracted segments of form and colour which suggest the possible presence of figures. We cannot be sure, and Adler must want us to accept his invitation to ‘discover a new land’, as he had written in his 1942 essay on Klee. In a smaller painting, the various objects assembled on a surface seem secure enough, but the bizarre creature suspended above them appears to be opening its ravenous mouth and preparing to gobble them all up. Adler was clearly haunted by the omnipresence of danger and extinction. Nevertheless, he refused to give in to despair. Bent on defying the enemy and ensuring his own survival, he devoted one of his paintings to defining an all-
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6. Composition with Fish
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7. Girl
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8. Reclining Nude
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9. Bird and Cage
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important moment of release. A cage sits on the table, harshly summarised by a series of bleak lines. Yet the bird who once lay trapped inside has been liberated by a standing figure on the left, who allows the pale and emaciated bird to fly towards a window where sky is visible beyond. The longer we scrutinise Adler’s work of the 1940s, the more we find ourselves caught up in a dramatic struggle between extremes of the human condition. One picture is devoted to a reclining nude woman, whose well-nourished limbs stretch across a shallow space while warm colour flares behind her. Leaning on her left elbow, this handsomely proportioned female is reminiscent of Picasso at his most neo-classical. Adler here asserts the reassuring solidity of flesh, and gives it an almost sculptural presence. At another extreme, though, he presents us in a different picture with an upright, half-length female nude as insubstantial as a ghost. With breasts bared, and hair blowing in the wind, she looks vulnerable and exposed. Her facial features are divided, like a Cubist painting, into full-face and profile. But this adds to the sense of chronic uncertainty, and the woman’s entire figure seems on the point of dissolving into the ominous nocturnal darkness surrounding her. By no means all Adler’s human figures are naked. Two drawings, one restricted to contours and the other more
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fully modelled, focus on a clothed woman seated in an armchair. She looks melancholy, and so does the haggard elderly man in a line drawing which might be a homage to Otto Dix. With legs crossed, this dishevelled man leans on a table and gazes downwards. Wrapped in a voluminous coat, he appears to be enduring the cold. But his facial expression is disconsolate, and an air of profound weariness pervades the scene. During his productive time in London, Adler was nourished by stimulating contact with artists and writers like Samuel Beckett, Dylan Thomas and Oskar Kokoschka – as well as Kurt Schwitters, who had sought refuge in Britain from Nazi oppressors and lived in the capital city after brief internment as an enemy alien in 1940. Adler also joined the ‘Ohel’ Club for Jewish intellectuals, whose other artistmembers included Martin Bloch, David Bomberg and Ludwig Meidner. Exhibitions of Adler’s work were held in galleries as prominent as the Redfern, Reid & Lefevre and Gimpel Fils in London, Waddington in Dublin, Galerie de France in Paris and Knoedler in New York. Even so, nothing could protect him from the wholly devastating impact of hearing, in 1945, that all eleven of his brothers and sisters had been killed by the Fascists. No wonder that most of the figures in his drawings from this period seem so fundamentally alone. One woman does at least have a cat as a companion, and she clutches the
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10. Woman with Cat
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11. Composition
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animal while encouraging it to nuzzle her face. But she still looks distraught, and plenty of these late pictures show isolated people who appear spectral. Some of them seem more like children than adults, and they stare out at us as if bewildered by the merciless world they find themselves inhabiting. One sketch shows a woman standing erect in profile, clearly displaying the advanced stage of her pregnancy. She looks determined to remain firm and resolute, yet Adler stresses her intense vulnerability as well. He was, above all, committed to telling the visual truth about a human race wracked by incessant warfare, deportation and the horrors of the concentration camps. That is why Adler’s achievement during these traumatic final years, before his sudden death at the age of 53, deserves to be fully recognised. Richard Cork, 2014
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12. Abstract Composition
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13. Still Life Abstract
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14. Two Figures
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15. Still Life
17. Plants
16. Landscape with Two Figures
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18. Man Drawing
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19. Woman at the Table
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20. Nude Girl
21. Bird, Fish and Boat
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22. Nude Lying Down
23. Nude Resting
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24. Woman on Blue Chair
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25. Two Figures with Apples
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26. Girl Seated
27. Two Women
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28. Girl’s Head
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Mercifully, most of the works he went on to produce during the 1940s have survived. The images in this exhibition reveal just how much powerful emotion informs the art Adler made throughout his fruitful British period. Richard Cork
JANKEL ADLER
29. Man with Hands Raised
31. War
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30. Nudes
32. Man Dancing
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33. Slaughter House
34. Woman with Hands Clasped
35. Four Figures
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36. Two Figures in a Landscape
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37. Two Figures and a Knife
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38. Abstract Figure in Grey Interior
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39. Still Life on Table
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40. Blue Interior
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41. Seated Woman with Pink and Blue
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42. Abstract Composition, Pink and Green
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43. Abstract Figures
44. Handstand
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46. Woman Reading
45. Woman Thinking
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47. Woman, Head in Hand
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48. Woman
50. Woman in Profile
49. Woman in a Hat
51. Old Woman Crying
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52. Two Figures, Blue and Black
53. Boy with Trumpet
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54. Dancer - Red, Yellow and Blue
55. Man in a Red Shirt
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56. Seated Man in Overcoat
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Finding refuge in Britain in 1941, the forty-six year old Jankel Adler embarked afresh on a richly distinctive journey as an artist. The powerful, often stark monumentality characterising his earlier continental period gave way to vibrant new works of most subtle intricacy and compassionate poignancy. All that he had learned and absorbed from the great Modernists he had known in the 1920s and ’30s – notably Klee, Ernst and Picasso – was now assimilated and integrated with apparently spontaneous ease into radically original, humane pictures made during the most searingly apocalyptic of times. Philip Vann art historian and writer
JANKEL ADLER
57. Figure in Movement
59. Wounded
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58. Actor
60. Man at a Table
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61. Bird Perching
63. Child Running
62. Rabbi at Prayer
64. Boy with Hands Raised
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65. Woman and Red Chair
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66. Blue Woman with Child
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67. Figure with Table
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68. Study for Seated Woman
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69. Seated Woman
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70. In Commemoration of the Polish Dead I Composition
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71. In Commemoration of the Polish Dead IV Figure with Construction
Adler’s distinctive line, at once loopy and angular, questing and rhythmically enfolding, explores an essentially tragic and anarchic view of the human condition. Andrew Lambirth writer, critic and curator
JANKEL ADLER
72. Woman Dancing
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73. Figure with Raised Hands
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74. Woman With Folded Arms
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CHRONOLOGY 1895 1912 1913
Born in Tuszyn, nr Łódź, Poland Underwent apprenticeship in engraving Moved to Barmen in Germany. Studied under Gustav Wiethüchter at the Kunstgerwerbeschule 1918 Came into contact with Das Junge Rheinland, a group of artists based in Düsseldorf Visited Poland, where he was one of the founders of the Ing Idisz (Young Yiddish) group 1920 Returned to Barmen, moving later to Düsseldorf. Played a major role in the Rheinische Sezession, joined the Rheingruppe and the Gruppe Progressiver Künstler in Cologne 1922 Helped organise a congress of the Union of Progressive International Artists 1922-33 Participated in major German and international exhibitions of progressive art 1926 Awarded first prize for Wall Painting. Portrait painted by Otto Dix 1928 Won a gold medal for his painting Cats 1931 Began friendship with Paul Klee at Düsseldorf Academy of Arts 1933 Forced to leave Germany at the height of his success. Paintings removed from German museums 1934 Settled in France, first in Paris and later in Argèles-sur-Mer 1938-40 Lived and worked in Cagnes-sur-Mer 1940 Joined Polish army 1941 Travelled to Glasgow. Influenced Colquhoun and MacBryde 1943 Moved to London, making contact with British painters and poets Exhibited Redfern Gallery, London 1945 Received news that all eleven of his brothers and sisters had been killed in the Holocaust 1946 Exhibited Reid & Lefevre, and Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels 1947 Exhibited at Gimpel Fils, London and Jerusalem and Tel Aviv Museums, Israel 1948 Exhibited at Knoedlers Galleries, New York 1949 Died 25th April in Whitley Cottage near Aldbourne aged 53
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75. Portrait of David Gascoyne
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76. Hunter
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77. Lady Seated
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78. Interior with Mother and Child
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79. Boy with Table
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80. Seated Nude with Raised Arm
81. Seated Nude, Legs Crossed
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82. Abstract, Black, Purple and Red
83. Two Figures, Red and Green
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EXHIBITION LIST medium
size cm
1. In Commemoration of the Polish Dead III Girl with Still Life gouache 47.5 x 35.0 2. Woman's Head, Red and Black watercolour 47.5 x 37.0 3. In Commemoration of the Polish Dead II Girl gouache 47.5 x 35.0 4. Woman oil on paper on board 63.0 x 53.5 5. Interior oil on canvas 111.0 x 85.0 6. Composition with Fish oil on canvas 63.0 x 75.5 7. Girl gouache 84.5 x 57.0 8. Reclining Nude gouache 56.0 x 76.0 9. Bird and Cage oil on canvas 91.0 x 69.5 10. Woman with Cat watercolour 49.5 x 37.0 11. Composition oil on canvas 88.0 x 142.0 12. Abstract Composition oil 50.5 x 56.0 13. Still Life Abstract oil on canvas 76.0 x 63.0 14. Two Figures oil on canvas 64.0 x 79.5 15. Still Life oil on canvas 19.0 x 24.0 16. Landscape with Two Figures oil on paper 24.0 x 30.0 17. Plants oil on canvas 24.5 x 19.5 18. Man Drawing blue pen 30.0 x 19.0 19. Woman at the Table pencil 28.0 x 20.5 20. Nude Girl watercolour 49.0 x 37.0 21. Bird, Fish and Boat gouache & w/colour 48.0 x 36.0 22. Nude Lying Down pencil 21.5 x 35.5 23. Nude Resting ink 29.0 x 32.0 24. Woman on Blue Chair watercolour 49.0 x 37.0 25. Two Figures with Apples gouache 41.5 x 60.0 26. Girl Seated monoprint 40.5 x 25.5 27. Two Women monoprint 33.0 x 34.0 28. Girls Head oil on canvas 64.0 x 49.0 29. Man with Hands Raised pencil 25.0 x 14.5 30. Nudes pen & ink 24.0 x 18.0
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84. Figure Composition
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85. Running Man
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EXHIBITION LIST medium 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.
War Man Dancing Slaughter House Woman with Hands Clasped Four Figures Two Figures in a Landscape Two Figures and a Knife Abstract Figure in Grey Interior Still Life on Table Blue Interior Seated Woman, Pink & Blue Abstract, Pink and Green Abstract Figures Handstand Woman Thinking Woman Reading Woman, Head in Hand Woman Woman in a Hat Woman in Profile Old Woman Crying Two Figures, Blue & Black Boy with Trumpet Dancer - Red, Yellow & Blue Man in a Red Shirt Seated Man in Overcoat Figure in Movement Actor Wounded Man at a Table Bird Perching Rabbi at Prayer
pencil pen & ink pencil pencil blue pen watercolour watercolour gouache watercolour gouache watercolour watercolour & pencil pencil, crayon, w/col monoprint & gouache ink ink monoprint pen pen & ink pen & ink ink ink & watercolour watercolour ink & watercolour watercolour crayon pen pen & ink pencil monoprint pen & ink pencil
size cm 15.5 x 21.5 19.0 x 23.0 16.0 x 8.5 16.0 x 12.5 21.5 x 32.5 19.0 x 28.0 30.5 x 19.5 45.0 x 30.5 43.5 x 35.0 44.5 x 29.0 24.0 x 19.5 40.0 x 29.0 41.0 x 32.0 24.0 x 19.5 36.0 x 27.5 35.0 x 30.0 38.0 x 24.0 28.0 x 9.5 30.0 x 12.5 33.0 x 22.5 47.5 x 23.0 22.0 x 28.5 17.0 x 22.0 31.0 x 13.0 21.5 x 19.5 55.5 x 41.0 26.5 x 21.5 26.0 x 20.5 25.5 x 21.5 24.5 x 16.5 12.0 x 10.0 13.0 x 5.5
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86. Rabbi Blessing
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87. Figure in a Room
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EXHIBITION LIST medium 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.
Child Running pen Boy with Hands Raised ink Woman and Red Chair watercolour & pen Blue Woman with Child ink & watercolour Figure with Table watercolour Study for Seated Woman pencil Seated Woman charcoal In Commemoration of the Polish Dead I Composition gouache In Commemoration of the Polish Dead IV Figure with Construction gouache Woman Dancing pencil Figure with Raised Hands pencil Woman With Folded Arms charcoal Portrait of David Gascoyne pencil crayon Hunter pencil Lady Seated ink Interior with Mother and Child pencil Boy with Table pencil Seated Nude with Raised Arm pencil Seated Nude, Legs Crossed pen & ink Abstract Black, Purple & Red gouache Two Figures, Red and Green gouache Figure Composition watercolour Running Man mixed media Rabbi Blessing ink Figure in a Room pen and pencil Reclining Nude, Raised Arm & Leg ink Resting Nude ink and wash Seated Nude, Blue ink & watercolour Woman with Hat and Necklace etching
size cm 18.5 x 15.0 16.5 x 20.5 17.5 x 7.0 30.5 x 10.0 49.5 x 37.0 60.5 x 47.5 67.5 x 47.5 47.5 x 35.0 47.5 32.5 35.5 61.5 36.0 33.5 52.0 15.0 23.5 27.5 23.0 14.5 23.5 18.0 17.0 23.5 25.5 16.5 16.0 35.5 27.0
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
35.0 26.5 22.5 48.5 18.0 19.5 29.5 19.5 30.5 17.0 15.5 23.5 29.0 16.0 15.0 13.5 18.5 26.0 40.0 20.0 14.0
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88. Reclining Nude, Raised Arm and Leg
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89. Resting Nude
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90. Seated Nude, Blue
half title page 1:
1. In Commemoration of the Polish Dead III - Girl with Still Life
page 72:
91. Woman With Hat and Necklace
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The works in this exhibition are from the Aukin collection. With thanks to Liane Aukin, David Aukin, Richard Cork, Andrew Lambirth, Philip Vann and Andrea Sylvester for their kind assistance. Published to accompany the exhibition at Goldmark Gallery in May 2014 All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-909167-13-1 Essay Š Richard Cork 2014 Photography Š Jay Goldmark/Christian Soro Frontispiece photograph V. Richards Design Porter/Goldmark
Goldmark Gallery Orange Street, Uppingham, Rutland, LE15 9SQ 01572 821424 www.goldmarkart.com
Richard Cork is an award-winning art critic, historian, broadcaster and curator. After reading Art History at Cambridge, where he gained a Doctorate, Cork became Art Critic of The Evening Standard and then Chief Art Critic of The Times. He was Editor of Studio International, and broadcasts regularly on BBC radio and TV. Cork became Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University in 1989-90, and Henry Moore Senior Fellow at the Courtauld Institute, 1992-5. He has acted as a judge for the Turner Prize and curated major exhibitions at Tate, the Hayward Gallery, the Barbican Art Gallery, the Royal Academy and other European venues. Cork’s many books include a ground-breaking study of Vorticism, awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1977; Art Beyond the Gallery, winner of the Banister Fletcher Award for the best art book in 1986; a major monograph on David Bomberg, 1987; A Bitter Truth: Avant-Garde Art and the Great War, winner of the Art Fund Award in 1995; Jacob Epstein, 1999; four acclaimed volumes of his critical writings on modern art, published by Yale in 2003; Michael CraigMartin, 2006; and Wild Thing: Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska, Gill, 2009. He was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy in 2011. His most recent book, The Healing Presence of Art, is a pioneering history of western art in hospitals from the Renaissance to the 20th century. It was published by Yale in 2012.