Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1889 Németboly, Austria-Hungary (now Bóly, Hungary)

Died: 1976 Ockley, Surrey, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1927

Other name/s: Ripszám Henrik, Henrik Ripszam, Henrick Ripszam, Rippy, Ripi

Biography

Painter, sculptor and athlete Henry Ripszam was born Henrik Ripszám to a German-speaking lower middle-class family in Németboly (near Pécs), Austria-Hungary (now Bóly, Hungary) in 1889; his father (after whom he was named) was an accomplished athlete and passed on to his son a love of running. In 1905 Ripszam enrolled at the Hungarian Academy of Craft and Design to study 'ornamental painting' and became friends with fellow students, Ervin Bossányi and Béla Szekeres. After graduating in 1910, he made murals for cafes and private homes and regularly submitted oils and watercolours to the Hungarian Salon exhibitions, participating for the first time in the 1911 Winter Exhibition. His career was interrupted by the First World War and he was captured by the Russians and sent to a labour camp in Stretensk, Siberia, where he made numerous caricatures and sketches depicting the life of the inmates, some of which featured in an internal magazine, produced by the prisoners. After acting as an interpreter to Swedish army officials visiting the camp, Ripszam sold them many of his pictures. He was released in March 1922 and on his return to Hungary, exhibited his Siberian drawings in April and May, also becoming a member of the Hungarian Watercolour Society and the Hungarian Salon. In 1926 he made 44 illustrations for Az égő Oroszország (Russia on Fire), an anti-Marxist tract written by former Hungarian prime minister, Károly Huszár, which was soon banned for its reactionary tone.

In April of the same year Ripszam moved to Sweden before immigrating to England in early 1927. He held his first exhibition at the Sloane Galleries, London in February and initially found employment in applied arts and graphic design, supporting himself by working mainly on advertisements and book covers. Early on, he was introduced to playwright, George Bernard Shaw, whom he sketched (private collection), and he also attracted the attention of the popular novelist and journalist Howard Spring, who bought a number of his Siberian landscape paintings after they were exhibited in Manchester in around 1928. In 1930, although not Jewish, he made character and performance sketches of the Russian-Jewish Habima Theatre Company on its visit to London; later moving to Tel Aviv it became Israel's national theatre after the founding of the new state in 1948. In 1930 he met Mary Lilian Keay, nicknamed 'Molly', daughter of a wealthy bridge designer and manufacturer from Birmingham, whom he married in 1932. They settled in Walliswood, Ockley in Surrey the same year, where Ripszam converted a Tudor barn into an art studio which became the home of various cultural events, including film screenings and informal concerts featuring well-known musicians such as Artur Schnabel, William Primrose and Harry Isaacs. Ripszam was passionate about music. He kept a piano in his studio and often asked his wife or his visitors to play while he worked. The Ripszams travelled extensively, spending six months in South America and some time in Japan, with Ripszam holding solo exhibitions in both Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo in 1933. They returned from India in 1939, immediately prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Ripszam became a naturalised British citizen in 1935 and subsequently helped fellow Hungarian émigrés including stained glass artist Ervin Bossányi and painter István Szegedi-Szűts to also obtain British citizenship.

Although his home and works survived the war unscathed, a studio fire in February 1948 destroyed much of his oeuvre (including early works from Siberia) just as he was preparing for a retrospective in London and a show of his watercolours of English cathedrals in Canterbury. In 1953 he submitted maquettes to the International Sculpture Competition for a memorial of the Unknown Political Prisoner that were chosen for display in the New Burlington Galleries in London. In 1956, the year of the Hungarian revolution against the Socialist Regime he made two figures of a boy and a girl in traditional Hungarian costume for the nativity of St Martin in the Fields, London and in 1964 he exhibited the watercolour Restoration at Canterbury at the Royal Academy of Arts. Between 1964 and 1969 both Ripszam and his wife were members of the Contemporary Art Society. Ripszam remained a lifelong supporter of sports and was president of the Oakwood Hill Football Club, also establishing the Ripszam Cup for road running. Henry Ripszam died at home, in Hazels, Wallis Wood, Ockley in 1976, and is buried with his wife at Ockley Parish Church. In March 2021, as part of the Insiders/Outsiders festival celebrating the cultural contribution made by the so-called Hitler emigres to the UK, a talk was presented on Ripszam's Habima drawings to coincide with the publication of Henry Ripszam: Habima. Ripszam's work, specifically a wooden sculpture of St John the Baptist, is held in the UK in the collection of Huddersfield Art Gallery.

Related books

Robert Waterhouse ed., Henry Ripszam: Habima (Manchester: Baquis Press, 2021)
Robert Waterhouse, Their Safe Haven: Hungarian Artists in Britain from the 1930s (Manchester: Baquis Press, 2019)
Ábel Hegedüs ed., Ripszám Henrik és a Magyar Tájfutás Kezdetei 1925–1948 [Henry Ripszam and the Origins of Orienteering in Hungary 1925-1948] (Budapest: Ábel Térképészeti Kft., 2016)
H. Ripszám, exhib. cat. (Budapest: Statisztikai Kiadó, 1974)

Public collections

Huddersfield Art Gallery

Related organisations

Association of Sussex Artists (member)
Contemporary Art Society (member 1964–69)
Horsham Arts Club (member)
Hungarian Academy of Craft and Design (student)
National Register of Designers (member)

Selected exhibitions

194th Exhibition of the Royal Academy (1962)
31st Annual Exhibition of the Association of Sussex Artists, Horsham Town Hall (1959)
Winning entries of the International Sculpture Competition, New Burlington Galleries (1953)
Exhibition of Hungarian Graphic Art, Hungarian Club, London (1943)
Exhibition of Water Colours by Charles Napier, R.S.W., Oils by H. Ripszam, N.R.D., Ripszam's Studio in Hazels, Wallis Wood (1939)
Watercolours by H. Ripszam, Wertheim Gallery, London (1936)
Paintings by Henrik Ripszam, Wertheim Gallery (1933)
Watercolours and Pastels by H. Ripszam, F. W. Smallwood's Studio, 52 Northumberland Street, Newcastle (1928)
Henrik Ripszam, Ruskin Galleries, Birmingham (1927)
Henrik Ripszam, Sloane Gallery, London (1927)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Henry Ripszam]