“Ghetto Theatre”, 1920, by David Bomberg, ©Estate of David Bomberg

But at the same time they came of age during the heyday of Modernism. “The new life should find its expression in a new art,” Bomberg said in a newspaper interview in 1914. Roger Fry’s controversial Post-Impressionist exhibitions of 1910 and 1912 were held when these young artists were studying at the Slade. The Ben Uri was founded in 1915 when the École de Paris was at its heyday, just two years after the Armory Show brought Modernism to America. They were drawn to traditional Jewish subjects but it was tradition with a Modernist twist.


“Rabbi and Rabbitzin”, 1914, by Mark Gertler, ©Ben Uri Collection

However, they engaged with Jewish subjects. What is striking about the second wave who dominate this exhibition — Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied central Europe, from Adler, Bloch and Meidner to refugees who came as children like Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach — is how they avoided Jewish subjects. No images of Judaism, almost no traces of the Holocaust, hardly any engagement with Israel. Until recently, most post-war work by Jewish artists has avoided obviously Jewish subjects. But there is nevertheless something dark and troubling about the solitary figures by Freud, the urban landscapes and thick black swirls of charcoal by Auerbach and Kossoff. To use David Sylvester’s phrase, these works by Jewish artists are “The Art of an Aftermath”.