The work of an overlooked German-Jewish artist who created the UK’s first memorial to victims of Nazi persecution is to be the focus of an exhibition that shines light on the unreported aspects of his life.
Fred Kormis, who fled Germany in the 1930s and later became a British citizen, was described by the Wiener Holocaust Library in London as a forgotten émigré artist who played a unique role in Weimar culture and 20th-century British art.
A prolific sculptor and printmaker, Kormis charted the emotional impact of the horrors of the 20th century while drawing on his own experiences of being held in a prisoner of war camp in Siberia during the first world war, living in Weimar Germany and taking flight from the Nazis.
Dr Barbara Warnock, a senior curator at the Wiener Library, said he had been overlooked in Britain partly because of his experience of being a refugee who had to leave his works behind in Germany.
“However, because of his age and background he had an unusual story of being a refugee both from nazism and being affected by the antisemitism and antisocialism of the Nazis,” she said.
“In terms of a resonance with the 21st century, it is that his experience illustrates how people and their lives can suddenly be so disrupted by historical events, conflict and antisemitism. But it’s also about the contribution and role of refugees when they come to a new society.”
Born in 1894 in Frankfurt into an Austrian and German-Jewish family, Kormis saw action and was wounded in the first world war as part of the Austrian army, before being held prisoner for four years in Siberia.
In the cultural crucible of Weimar Germany, he had been growing in popularity and renown until the Nazis consolidated their power. fter being compelled by his conscience to reveal he was Jewish, his artwork was labelled as “degenerate” and he was forced to flee with his wife, Rachel Sender, into relative poverty in London in 1934.
Kormis had to contend with struggling to avoid internment as an “enemy alien” and coping with the loss of his work as bombs fell on his studio during the blitz.
He continued his lifelong preoccupation of using sculpture to memorialise and represent the emotional impact of captivity. This culminated in the 1960s in his prisoners of war and victims of concentration camps memorial in Gladstone Park, Dollis Hill, north-west London. Some of his other work is held in UK collections, including the coins and medals department of the British Museum.
The exhibition, Fred Kormis: Sculpting the Twentieth Century, runs until 6 February next year at the Wiener Holocaust Library. It features unique objects and documents from the library’s archive, as well as artworks loaned from collections around the UK.
It takes place after a revamp of the gallery at the London institution, which houses the world’s oldest archive on the Holocaust and the Nazi era.
Germany’s deputy ambassador to the UK, Karl-Matthias Klause, spoke of the poignancy of the exhibition at an event to mark its opening last week: “Eyewitnesses, records, images and film footage are all crucial to be able to remember and learn from the past, and remembering defines us as human beings. Art adds another layer to this, directly appealing to our humanity on an emotional and deeply personal level.”