Ben Uri Research Unit

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


Hugo Dachinger artist

Hugo 'Puck' Dachinger was born to Jewish middle-class parents in Gmunden, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) in 1908. He studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Leipzig, Germany (1929–32), afterwards, working as a graphic designer, establishing workshops in Vienna, Leipzig, Zagreb and Budapest. In 1938 he immigrated to England, settling in north London and establishing Transposter Advertising Ltd with Ernst Rosenfeld; post-internment, he focussed increasingly on painting.

Born: 1908 Gmunden, Austria-Hungary (now Austria)

Died: 1995 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1938

Other name/s: Puck


Biography

Graphic artist, designer, painter and sculptor, Hugo 'Puck' Dachinger was born to Jewish middle-class parents in Gmunden, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) on 19 September 1908. He studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Leipzig, Germany (1929–32), paying for his tuition by selling portrait drawings and working as a salesman and window-dresser and afterwards moved to Vienna, where he worked as a window-dresser for the English firm Saville and Co. He invented a system of moveable type, which he patented in 1933, establishing workshops in Leipzig, Zagreb and Budapest.

In 1938, sponsored by Saville and Co, Dachinger immigrated to England, travelling via Denmark, settling in north London and establishing Transposter Advertising Ltd with Ernst Rosenfeld (which closed in 1945). In June 1940, Dachinger was arrested under Winston Churchill’s policy of mass internment of ‘enemy aliens’ and was first held at a transit camp at Kempton Park racecourse, then interned in Huyton Camp, Liverpool and, finally, in Mooragh Camp, Ramsey, on the Isle of Man. During these seven months, Dachinger produced a vast quantity of artworks featuring domestic scenes, satirical cartoons, modernist designs and portraits of fellow internees. He often used found or ersatz materials including newspapers, toothpaste and gravy browning: his portrait of Austrian engineer Wilhelm Hollitscher (1940, Ben Uri Collection), one of a series made in Huyton, utilised the front page of The Times newspaper as an unconventional picture surface, dramatically integrating text into the composition. In 1940 Dachinger held an exhibition of his Huyton works in the camp entitled Art Behind Barbed Wire.

After his release in January 1941, Dachinger married German émigrée and fellow artist Meta Gutmann, who nicknamed him 'Puck'. He moved to Hampstead, north London, where he remained for more than 40 years, and held a commercial exhibition of his internment drawings, again entitled Art Behind Barbed Wire, at the prestigious Redfern Gallery, which garnered significant critical attention. The Manchester Guardian noted: 'The exhibition is a bitter revelation of a prisoner's state of mind. [The pictures] show every aspect of life behind barbed wire. Sometimes they are pathetic and resigned, sometimes angry, sometimes despairing' (p. 6). Jan Gordon in the Observer commented: 'The outstanding pieces are the portraits. No. 18, for instance, having the force of an early Van Gogh, others are strongly but subtly marked with a sense of unexpectant fatigue' (Gordon 1941, p. 7). Dachinger also exhibited at German-Jewish émigré Jack Bilbo's Modern Art Gallery in London in 1942 and alongside fellow Austrian artists at both the Redfern and Leger Galleries from 1941–45. In 1944 he participated in the Exhibition of Drawings, Paintings & Sculptures by Free German Artists organised by the Free German League of Culture (FGLC), a politically inspired organisation founded in Hampstead in 1939, to offer cultural support to anti-Nazi German refugees in Britain throughout the war. The following year, his work was included in Ben Uri's Exhibition of Portraits by Contemporary Jewish Artists. Dachinger spent much time drawing its cafes reflecting his fascination with the people around him; he also continued to work as an inventor and designer for various publishing companies. His work featured in group exhibitions including Kunst im Exil in Grossbritannien 1933–45 in Berlin, Oberhuasen and Vienna in 1986, and its smaller iteration at Camden Arts Centre, London, later the same year.


Hugo Dachinger died in London, England on 2 December 1995. His work was exhibited posthumously in exhibitions including Art Behind Barbed Wire (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 2004); and Ben Uri's touring exhibition Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain, c. 1933–45 (London, Isle of Man, and Birkenhead, 2009–10). In 2012 the Austrian Cultural Forum in London held the first UK Dachinger retrospective. Following Ben Uri's accession of the Hollitscher portrait in 2018, it was included in the exhibitions, Out of Austria: Austrian Emigré Artists to the UK (2018), and ART-EXIT: 1939 – A Very Different Europe, at the European Commission's 12 Star Gallery, London (2019), during which Labour politician, Dame Margaret Hodge, was interviewed by the press in front of the portrait of her late grandfather. Dachinger's work is held in UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the British Museum, the Manx Museum on the Isle of Man, and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

Related books

  • Ines Newman, Charmian Brinson and Rachel Dickson, Internment in Britain in 1940: Life and Art Behind the Wire (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2021)
  • Peter Wakelin, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art (Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2019)
  • Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson, Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain, c. 1933–1945 (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2009)
  • Martin Suppan, Hugo Puck Dachinger (1908–1995) Innovationsgeist im Exil (The Spirit of Innovation in Exile) (Vienna: Sunnan Fine Arts, 2007)
  • Jessica Feather, Art Behind Barbed Wire (Liverpool: National Museums Liverpool, 2004)
  • Jutta Vinzent, Identity and Image: Refugee Artists from Nazi Germany in Britain (1933–1945) (Kromsdorf/Weimar: VDG Verlag, 2006), pp. 88, 102, 112, 114, 118, 138, 254, 268, 282
  • Jan Gordon, 'Art and Artists', The Observer, 27 April 1941, p. 7
  • 'Behind Barbed Wire', The Manchester Guardian, 19 April 1941, p. 6

Public collections

Related organisations

  • School of Arts and Crafts, Leipzig (student,1929–32)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Works on Paper, Galerie Suppan Fine Arts (2018)
  • Hugo Puck Dachinger, Austrian Cultural Forum London (2012–13)
  • Hugo ‘Puck’ Dachinger (1908–1995), Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2013)
  • Hugo Puck Dachinger, Austrian Cultural Forum London (2013)
  • Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain, c. 1933–45, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2009–10)
  • Art Behind Barbed Wire, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2004)
  • Eight Exiled Artists: an Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Prints, John Denham Gallery (1999)
  • Hugo (Puck) Dachinger: an Exhibition of Oils and Work on Paper, John Denham Gallery (1997)
  • Puck Dachinger – Collages, Drawings, Pastels And Watercolours 1940s to 1986, John Denham Gallery, London (1989)
  • Exhibition of Portraits by Contemporary Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (1945)
  • Basil Jonzen, Michaeol Ayrton, Hugo Dachinger: also French Paintings, Redfern Gallery (1944)
  • Abstract Works by Armstrong, Cecil Stephenson, Maeve Gilmore, Mervyn Peake, Hugo Dachinger, Peter Jones Gallery (1943)
  • Paintings, Watercolours and Sculptures by Contemporary Artists’, Leger Art Gallery (1943)
  • Pintings by Hugo Dachinger, Oba Holloway and Leading Contemporary Artists, Modern Art Gallery, London (1942)
  • Art Behind Barbed Wire, Redfern Gallery, London (1941)
  • Paintings by Hugo Dachinger, Redfern Gallery (1941)
  Hugo Dachinger
   
Ben Uri collection

Hugo Dachinger in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Hugo Dachinger]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Hugo Dachinger] in the Ben Uri Library