Born: 1920 Vienna, Austria
Died: 2018 Vienna, Austria
Year of Migration to the UK: 1939
Other name/s: Ernst Eisenmeyer
Biography
Painter and sculptor, Ernst Eisenmayer was born into a poor Jewish family of Austro-Hungarian descent in Vienna, Austria on 18 September 1920; in his youth he attended evening drawing classes in the city. As he recounts in his autobiography, A Strange Haircut, attempting to escape Austria following the Anschluss (Nazi annexation of Austria) in 1938, he was arrested on the French border, held in Saarbrücken prison and then sent to Dachau concentration camp. With the assistance of his brother's British guardian, Professor J. L. Brierley, who arranged a traineeship for him in Oxford, he was able to secure release and arrived in England in September 1939, aged 19. Initially employed at Lucy Eagle’s Iron Works, while taking evening art classes, Eisenmayer met fellow refugee and future film director and producer, Kurt Weiler, who remained a lifelong friend. Following the introduction of mass internment for so-called ‘enemy aliens’ in early summer 1940, Eisenmayer was interned on the Isle of Man from October 1940 until September 1941, first in Central, then Onchan, and finally at Mooragh Camp. He made art throughout internment, often using improvised materials, sketching portraits, landscapes, camp views and scenes of daily life; he also participated in the Onchan camp art exhibition, organised in autumn 1940 by fellow internee, Jack Bilbo, and contributed artwork to the the camp newspaper, The Onchan Pioneer. His sketch Violinist at Onchan featured in a set of six Isle of Man stamps commemorating internment, produced in 2010.
After release, Eisenmayer moved to London and worked as a toolmaker in an Acton factory, joining the Young Austria movement, where he met fellow refugee artists Erich Deutsch (Eric Doitch) and Heinz Inländer (Henry Inlander) who became close friends, and with whom he studied at Camberwell School of Art (1946–47) under Victor Pasmore. He also renewed his friendship with émigré writer Erich Fried (a childhood neighbour from Vienna( and was mentored by Austrian Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka. In 1944 Eisenmayer's work was included in the exhibition Austrian Art in Exile organised by the Austrian Centre (AC) in London. His early figurative paintings and works on paper of the 1940s and 1950s were inspired by his life in exile in London, and included industrial landscapes, suburban street scenes, and self-portraits. Postwar, he initially worked for a small London firm designing and making jewellery and during the 1950s and 1960s he participated regularly in group shows at Ben Uri Gallery, beginning with the Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Jewish Artists in 1954. In 1961 he participated in Ben Uri's opening show at its new gallery in Berners Street and a two-person exhibition for Eisenmayer and Ruth Abrahams was held the following year; in 1972 Eisenmayer became a member of the Ben Uri Art Committee. As his reputation grew, he became a full-time artist around 1962, turning increasingly to sculpture, which was often large-scale, both figurative and abstract, and conceived for the outdoors, using carved, welded or cast materials. He participated in a group sculpture exhibition in New York in 1969; in 1970 he contributed a large sculpture to the British pavilion at Expo ’70 in Japan. and in 1975 he showed in the Holland Park Open Air Sculpture Exhibition, London. Eisenmayer had several one-man exhibitions in London (showing his sculpture regularly with Gillian Raffles' Mercury Gallery from 1964), in Osaka, and his birthplace, Vienna; In 1996 his work was included in Ben Uri's loan exhibition Paintings Drawings and Sculpture by Austrian Artists Whose Lives Were Disrupted by the Holocaust. From 1974-88, he lived in Carrara, Italy before moving to Amsterdam for eight years; his final years were spent in Israel and in his native Vienna, to where he finally returned in 2011. In 2012 Eisenmayer received the Medal of Honour of the City of Vienna in recognition of his art.
Ernst Eisenmayer died in Vienna, Austria on 27 March 2018, aged 97. His work has undergone a critical reassessment since 2010, particularly in the wake of renewed interest in internment history. His painting Strip Poker closed Ben Uri’s 2010 exhibition Forced Journeys, which toured to Douglas, Isle of Man, and to Birkenhead, Liverpool (the port of embarkation for Manx internees), marking the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the internment camps. This was followed by a solo exhibition Art Beyond Exile curated by Professor Fran Lloyd at the Austrian Cultural Forum, London and the Sayle Gallery, Douglas, Isle of Man (2012). In 2018 examples of his internment work were featured in Ben Uri's exhibition Out of Austria, marking the 80th anniversary of the Anschluss. Eisenmayer`s work is represented in UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection, King's Lynn Museums, Peterborough Museum, and Southlands College, University of Roehampton, London.
Related books
- Alan Windsor, British Sculptors of the Twentieth Century (Taylor and Francis E-Book, 2017)
- Fran Lloyd, 'Becoming Artists: Ernst Eisenmayer, Kurt Weiler, and Refugee Support Networks in Wartime Oxford', in Sally Crawford, Katharina Ulmschneider and Jaś Elsner eds., Ark of Civilization: Refugee Scholars and Oxford University, 1930–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)
- Fran Lloyd, Ernst Eisenmayer: Art Beyond Exile (Isle of Man: Sayle Gallery, 2012)
- Fran Lloyd, `Ernst Eisenmayer: a Modern Babel`, in Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson eds., Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain c. 1933–45 (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2009), pp. 64-73
- Ernst Eisenmayer, A Strange Haircut: A Roundabout Story of Leaving Vienna 1938/39 (Amsterdam: Lulu Press, 2008)
- Jutta Vinzent, 'List of Refugee Artists (Painters, Sculptors, and Graphic Artists) From Nazi Germany in Britain (1933–1945)', in Identity and Image: Refugee Artists from Nazi Germany in Britain (1933–1945) (Kromsdorf/Weimar: VDG Verlag, 2006), pp. 249-298
- Gabriele Kohlbauer-Fritz ed., About the Dignity of Man – Ernst Eisenmayer, Leben und Werk (Vienna: Jüdisches Museum, 2002)
- David Buckman, Dictionary of Artists in Britain since 1945 (Bristol, 1998), p. 246
- Ernst Eisenmayer: Sculpture in Bronze and Stone (London: Mercury Gallery, 1972)
Public collections
Related organisations
- Austrian Centre (member)
- Young Austria (member)
- Camberwell School of Art (student, 1946–47)
- Ben Uri Arts Committee (member)
Related web links
Selected exhibitions
- Ernst Eisenmayer: Art Beyond Exile, Austrian Cultural Forum, London and the Sayle Gallery, Douglas, Isle of Man (2012)
- Forced Journeys, Ben Uri Gallery, London and touring (20009-10)
- About the Dignity of Man, Jewish Museum Vienna (2002)
- Flight and Return, Etz Chayim Gallery, Northwood (1997)
- Holland Park Open Air Sculpture Exhibition, London (1975)
- Peter Bain - Paintings, Ernst Eisenmayer - Sculpture, Dennis Hawkins - New Prints, Oxford Gallery (1974)
- Ernst Eisenmayer: Sculpture in Bronze and Stone, Mercury Gallery (1972)
- Eisenmayer, Bronze, Serpentin, Gouache-Studien, Galerie Welz, Salzburg (1969)
- Ernst Eisenmayer: Sculpture in Bronze and Stone, Mercury Gallery (1968)
- New Sculpture by Ernst Eisenmayer, Mercury Gallery, London (1966)
- Observer exhibition, London (1967)
- Solo exhibition, Secession Gallery, Vienna (1969 and 1967)
- Steel Sculpture by Ernst Eisenmayer, Mercury Gallery, London (1966)
- Ruth Abrahams - Ernest Eisenmayer, Ben Uri Art Society, Berners Street Gallery (1962)
- solo exhibition, Whibley Gallery, London (1963 and 1961)
- Group Show Paintings: Bernard Gay, John Nicoll, William Belcher, Christopher Hall, Ernest Eisenmayer, Borge Sornum, Artists International Association (1955)
- Austrian Art in Exile, Austrian Women’s Voluntary Workers, London (1944)
Ben Uri collection
Ernst Eisenmayer in the Ben Uri collection
Ben Uri archive
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Ernst Eisenmayer]
Ben Uri library
Publications related to [Ernst Eisenmayer] in the Ben Uri Library