Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


David Bomberg artist

David Bomberg was born to Polish-Jewish parents in Birmingham, England, in 1890 and enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1911. Considered one of the ‘Whitechapel Boys’ – a loose, informal group of young, Jewish, mainly immigrant artists, who made an important contribution to British Modernism, his early experimental period was influenced by avant-garde movements including Cubism and Futurism; he was also associated with - though never a member of - the Vorticists. During the 1920s Bomberg began to paint in a tightly topographical manner, before evolving a characteristically expressionist style from the 1930s onwards.

Born: 1890 Birmingham, England

Died: 1957 London, England


Biography

Painter and draughtsman David Bomberg was one of eleven children born to Polish-Jewish parents in Birmingham, England on 5 December 1890. The family moved to Whitechapel in 1895, where Bomberg later became prominent among the ‘Whitechapel Boys’. This loose, informal group of young, Jewish, mainly immigrant artists who were either born, raised or worked in the East End in the first two decades of the 20th century, and who, both collectively, and individually, made an important contribution to British Modernism. Initially apprenticed as a chromolithographer, he attended night classes under Walter Sickert and with the help of the Jewish Education Aid Society enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1911, where he was seen as a ‘disturbing influence’.

In 1913 Bomberg visited Paris with Jacob Epstein in order to source works for the Jewish section of an exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery. There he made contact with leading avant-garde artists including Modigliani and Picasso. After leaving the Slade, Bomberg produced two major works influenced by Cubism and Futurism, In the Hold (1913–14) and The Mud Bath (1914) (both now in the Tate Gallery). The latter was shown at his first one-man exhibition at the Chenil Galleries in London in July 1914, the same year in which he became a founder member of the London Group. Remaining independent of Wyndham Lewis and the Vorticists, Bomberg exhibited as a non-member at the Vorticist exhibition at the Doré Galleries in London in 1915. During the First World War Bomberg enlisted in the Royal Engineers and was transferred to the 18th King's Royal Rifles. In 1917 he was commissioned to produce a painting, Sappers at Work, for the Canadian War Memorials Fund. The first version, which drew on the geometrical abstraction of most of his pre-war work, was rejected, but a second, more conventional picture, was accepted for the National Gallery of Canada. His post-war disillusionment is most powerfully expressed in the masterly Ghetto Theatre, acquired by the Ben Uri Gallery in 1920.

In April 1923 Bomberg travelled to Jerusalem with financial support from the Palestine Foundation Fund, where he began to work en plein air for the first time. Following expeditions to Jericho, Petra and Wadi Kelt, he produced a series of detailed, realistic landscapes, which evolved from tightly topographical treatments into a looser, characteristically expressionistic style, heralding the painterly achievements of his final years including Mount Zion and the Church of the Dormition, Jerusalem (1923). Following his return to London works from Palestine and Petra were exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in February 1928 and, four months later, in the artist's London studio.

Bomberg first visited Spain in August 1929 and painted, for the most part, in Toledo, making a series of paintings of the Cathedral. He returned to Spain in 1934, visiting the Asturias, Cuenca, and the town of Ronda in Andalucia where he drew and painted the gorge and flickering night-time processions during Holy Week. Civil unrest forced his return to England late in 1935. An exhibition of Sixty Imaginative Compositions, Spanish and Scottish Landscapes and Other Works was held at the Bloomsbury Gallery in London in November 1932, and, in June 1936, an exhibition of Recent Paintings of Spain was held at the Cooling Galleries. In January 1937 Bomberg held a retrospective exhibition at the Foyle Art Gallery together with Horace Brodzky and Margarete Hamerschlag. In 1941 he married painter, Lilian Holt, who accompanied Bomberg on painting expeditions and played an important part in furthering and protecting his posthumous reputation.

During the Second World War, Bomberg made numerous unsuccessful applications for teaching posts and even though he received a commission from the War Artists' Advisory Committee to paint a bomb store in Burton-on-Trent, the finished painting was not approved. After a series of disappointments in the 1930s and 1940s, Bomberg concentrated on portraits of friends and family, as well as a series of searching self-portraits. The last one-man show held during Bomberg's lifetime was the Exhibition of Imaginative Compositions at the Leger Gallery in November 1943.

Bomberg eventually found part-time employment as a teacher of drawing at the Bartlett School of Architecture (1945–49) and, with considerable success, at the Borough Polytechnic (1945–53), where his pupils included Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Leslie Marr, Dorothy Mead, and Gustav Metzger. His teaching at the Polytechnic resulted in the formation of two exhibiting societies designed to celebrate and to disseminate Bomberg's work and approach to teaching more widely: The Borough Group (1947–50) and the Borough Bottega (1953–55). Having completed successful painting trips to the West Country and to Cyprus, in 1948, Bomberg abandoned painting, though he continued to work as an art teacher. In 1952 Bomberg's proposal to establish an art school in Spain failed due to lack of funding. He returned to Ronda in 1954 where he painted until May 1957. Like William Roberts (1895–1980), a contemporary at the Slade, Bomberg was angered by his minimal inclusion in the exhibition of Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism held at the Tate Gallery in 1956. In 1957 he produced numerous writings taking issue with its view of the pre-war London art world and protesting at the lengthy critical neglect which he had suffered. He became ill while in Ronda and returned to London.

David Bomberg died in London, England on 19 August 1957. His work is represented in numerous UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the British Museum, the Imperial War Museum, the Tate and the V&A. In 1967 a critical reappraisal was publishd by William Lipke, followed by a comprehensive monograph in 1987 by Richard Cork, who has since contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues. In 2017 Ben Uri Gallery mounted a touring exhibition opening at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, touring to the Laing, Newcastle and concluding at Ben Uri Gallery, London, accompanied by a monograph by Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson.

Related books

  • Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson, Bomberg (London: Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, 2017)
  • Dominika Buchowska, ‘A Sense of Form’: The Art of David Bomberg (Poland: Tako, 2015)
  • Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson eds., Out of Chaos: Ben Uri 100 Years in London (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2015), pp. 150-151
  • David Boyd Hancock, ‘A Crisis of Brilliance: The Slade and Six Young British Artists’, in Boyd Haycock, Frances Spalding and Alexandra Harrison eds., Bomberg: A Crisis of Brilliance, 1908–1922 (London: Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2013)
  • Emma Chambers, 'Jewish Artists and Jewish Art in London', in Lizzy Carey-Thomas ed., Migrations: Journeys into British Art (London, Tate Publishing, 2012)
  • Sarah MacDougall, ‘Something is Happening There’: Early British Modernism, the Great War and the ‘Whitechapel Boys’ in Michael K Walsh ed., London, Modernism and 1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)
  • Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson eds., Whitechapel at War: Isaac Rosenberg and his Circle (London: Ben Uri in association with Lund Humphries, 2008)
  • Richard Cork ed., David Bomberg: Spirit in the Mass (Kendal: Abbot Hall Art Gallery, 2006)
  • David Bomberg en Ronda (Ronda: Museo Joaquin Peinado, 2004)
  • Lisa Tickner, Modern Life and Modern Subjects (London: Yale University Press, 2000)
  • David Peters Corbett and Lara Perry, English Art 1860–1914: Modern Artists and Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Pres, 2000)
  • David Peters Corbett, The Modernity of English Art 1914–30 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997)
  • Charles Harrison, English Art and Modernism 1900–1939, 2nd ed., (London: Yale University Press, 1994)
  • Richard Cork ed., David Bomberg, (London: The Tate Gallery, 1988)
  • Richard Cork, David Bomberg (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987)
  • Nicholas Serota and Jennifer Brook eds., David Bomberg: The Later Years (London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1979)
  • Paintings and Drawings by David Bomberg (1890–1957) and Lilian Holt (Reading: Reading Museum and Art Gallery, 1971)
  • William Lipke, David Bomberg: a Critical Study of His Life and Work (London: Evelyn, Adams & Mackay Ltd., 1967)
  • Joanna Drew ed., David Bomberg 1890–1957 (London: Tate Gallery, 1967)
  • Andrew Forge ed., David Bomberg 1890–1957: An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings (London: The Arts Council Gallery, 1958)
  • Barbara Gingold, David Bomberg in Palestine (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1983)
  • Gill Polonsky, Gill Polonsky on David Bomberg (London: Bernard Jacobson Ltd, 1990)

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Bartlett School of Architecture (teacher)
  • Borough Polytechnic (teacher)
  • Jewish Education Aid Society (funding recipient)
  • Slade School of Fine Art (student)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Young Bomberg and the Old Masters, National Gallery (2019)
  • Bomberg, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2018)
  • Crossing Borders, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull (2018–19)
  • All Too Human, Tate (2018)
  • Bomberg, Pallant House Gallery (tour to Laing Gallery) (2017)
  • David Bomberg: A Sense of Place, Towner Gallery (2016)
  • Out of Chaos: Ben Uri 100 years in London, Somerset House (2015)
  • David Bomberg to Paula Rego: The London Group in Southampton, Southampton City Art Gallery (2014)
  • Nash, Nevinson, Spencer, Gertler, Carrington, Bomberg: A Crisis of Brilliance, 1908–1922, Dulwich Picture Gallery (2013)
  • David Bomberg: Objects of Collection, LSBU (2013)
  • London’s Post-War Art Scene – David Bomberg and the Borough Group, LSBU (2013)
  • An Introduction to a David Bomberg Legacy – The Sarah Rose Collection, LSBU (2012)
  • Whitechapel at War: Isaac Rosenberg and his Circle, Ben Uri Gallery (2008)
  • Bomberg and the Borough Group, Pallant House Gallery (2007)
  • Bomberg’s Relevance, Ben Uri Gallery (2007)
  • David Bomberg: Spirit in the Mass, Abbot Hall Art Gallery (2006)
  • David Bomberg 1890–1957: Centenary Exhibition – Works on paper, Gillian Jason Gallery (1990)
  • David Bomberg Retropective, Tate (1988)
  • David Bomberg in the Holy Land, 1923–1927, Ben Uri Gallery (1983)
  • David Bomberg: The Later Years, Whitechapel Gallery (1979)
  • Paintings and drawings by David Bomberg (1890–1957) and Lilian Holt, Reading Museum and Art Gallery (1971)
  • David Bomberg, 1890–1957: Paintings and Drawings, Tate (1967)
  • David Bomberg 1890–1957: An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings, Arts Council (1958)
  • David Bomberg and the Borough Bottega, Heffer Gallery (1954)
  • Borough Bottega, Berkeley Galleries (1953)
  • Borough Group Exhibition, Archer Gallery (1948)
  • Exhibition of Imaginative Compositions, Leger Gallery (1943)
  • David Bomberg Retrospective (with Horace Brodzky and Margarete Hamerschlag), Foyle Art Gallery (1937)
  • Recent Paintings of Spain, Cooling Galleries (1936)
  • Sixty Imaginative Compositions, Spanish and Scottish Landscapes and Other Works, Bloomsbury Gallery (1932)
  • Paintings and Drawings of Palestine and Petra, Ruskin Gallery (1929)
  • David Bomberg, Heal’s Mansard Gallery (1923)
  • David Bomberg, Adelphi Gallery (1919)
  • Works by David Bomberg, Chenil Gallery (1914)
  • Twentieth Century Art: A Review of Modern Movements, Whitechapel Gallery (1914)
  • The Camden Town Group and Others, Brighton City Art Gallery (1913)
  David Bomberg
   
Ben Uri collection

David Bomberg in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [David Bomberg]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [David Bomberg] in the Ben Uri Library