Born: 1955 Warsaw, Poland
Year of Migration to the UK: 1971
Biography
Artist, lecturer and translator, Lydia Bauman was born in Warsaw, Poland to Polish-Jewish parents in 1955. Her father was the sociologist and Marxist philosopher, Zygmunt Bauman, and her mother, the writer and journalist Janina Bauman. After Zygmunt Bauman was expelled from Warsaw University in 1968 during the anti-Semitic campaign to purge Poles of Jewish descent (led by the politician Mieczysław Moczar), the family moved to Israel where Bauman taught at Tel Aviv University. In 1970, he was then offered the post of Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds.
Subsequently, Lydia Bauman arrived with her family in Leeds, northern England in 1971. She studied for her BA in Fine Art at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (1974–78, where she was awarded the John Christie Scholarship in 1976 and the Hatton Award in 1977) and her MA in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London (1978–80). After two solo shows at Leigh Gallery in 1985 and 1986, Bauman had many appearances in UK exhibitions. Notably, in 1986 she exhibited with the first show organised by Bigos: a collective of artists of Polish origin founded by Polish émigrés, Andrzej Maria Borkowski, Stefan Szczelkun and Kasia Januszko. Exhibiting 23 artists at the Brixton Gallery in south London, the Bigos catalogue states that the collective aimed to offer an 'insight into the emigre experience but also release Polish creativity in the evolution of British and Euro culture' (Szczelkun, Bigos: Artists of Polish Origin, 1986). Despite Bigos’ attempt to group artists together based on their Polish heritage, in the same catalogue Bauman states that ‘There is nothing specifically Polish about the character of my work – it is influenced by visual sources from very diverse cultures’. Offering an insight into her artistic practice at this time, she continues: ‘The subject is incidental – an opportunity really for a play of light, surface texture and pattern. To this end I experiment with translucent and textured media such as plaster, gesso, varnishes and wax’. Bauman continued to exhibit with Bigos until 1991, along with other female artists who established wider reputations, such as Maria Chevska and Ruth Jacobson (who also showed with Ben Uri).
Alongside and after Bigos, Bauman established her practice in landscape painting, for which she is best known (characterised by a fresco-related technique in which pigments mixed with plaster were layered with resin and wax and then sanded down), holding solo shows at London venues such as the Rebecca Hossack Gallery (1988, owned by the eponymous Australian-born gallerist) and the Catto Gallery (1997) in Hampstead. With the exhibitions entitled respectively, Mixed Metaphors and In Search of the Promised Land, Bauman’s landscapes spoke to the politics of space, place, displacement and territories. It was thus in 1997 that she caught the attention of renowned art historian and theorist, Griselda Pollock, who in a preface to an exhibition catalogue stated that Bauman’s landscapes presented ‘the dense constellation of twentieth century art’s histories and those of the artist, who in herself, born in Warsaw, resident in London, carries some of our century’s telling experiences of loss and deterritorialisation into contemporary art in a singular and compelling artistic practice’ (Pollock, Lydia Bauman, 1997). Since the 1990s, Bauman has continued to exhibit her landscapes across the UK (and beyond) in solo, group and touring exhibitions in locations such as London, Leeds, Cornwall and Lincoln.
In addition to painting and exhibiting her work, Bauman has worked as an art reviewer for BBC Radio External Services, and as a lecturer at the Tate Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery, and at various universities in London. Additionally, she has translated her father’s work from Polish to English in 2011 and 2015, published on her mother’s life and writing in 2010 and 2022, and has been a guest speaker for educational holidays run by Martin Randall Tours, The Arts Society, Noble Caledonia, and Cox & Kings art tours. Lydia Bauman lives and works in London. Her artwork is represented in UK public collections including Liverpool University collections at the Victoria Art Gallery and Museum, Liverpool.
Related books
- Lydia Bauman, 'Janina Bauman: To Remain Human in Inhuman Conditions', in Jack Palmer and Dariusz Brzeziński eds., Revisiting Modernity and the Holocaust: Heritage, Dilemmas, Extensions (London: Routledge, 2022), pp. 145-155
- Zygmunt Bauman and Stanislaw Obirek, On the World and Ourselves, translated by Lydia Bauman (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015)
- Nigel Gizzard, Griselda Pollock and Paul Whittle eds., Jewish Artists in Yorkshire (Leeds: The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, 2013)
- Shaun Best, Zygmunt Bauman: Why Good People do Bad Things (Surrey and Burlington: Ashgate, 2013)
- Paul O'Connor, 'Bauman Pours Out Culture', Cultural Studies Review, Vol. 18, No. 1, 2012, pp. 263-266
- Zygmunt Bauman, Culture in a Liquid Modern World, translated by Lydia Bauman (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011)
- Lydia Bauman, 'Janina Bauman Obituary', Guardian (26 January, 2010)
- Lydia Bauman, Alone in the Land (London: NRG Publishing, 2005)
- David Buckman, ed., 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' (Bristol: Art Dictionaries Ltd,, 2004)
- Lydia Bauman, Highways & Byways (Leeds: University of Leeds and Falmouth Art Gallery, 1999)
- Griselda Pollock, 'Lydia Bauman: The Poetic Image in the Field of the Uncanny', in Lydia Bauman, Landscapes (Warsaw: Zacheta Gallery, 1997), pp. 25-37
- Stefan Szczelkun ed., Bigos: Artists of Polish Origin (London: Brixton Gallery, 1986)
Public collections
Related organisations
- BBC (art reviewer)
- Courtauld Institute of Art, London (student)
- National Gallery (lecturer)
- National Portrait Gallery (lecturer) (lecturer)
- Tate Gallery (lecturer) (lecturer)
- The Arts Society (speaker) (speaker)
- University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England (student)
Related web links
Selected exhibitions
- Looking for Georgia - New Mexico in the Footsteps of Georgia O'Keeffe, Mall Galleries, London (2018)
- Earth Air Water, Brick Lane Gallery (2018)
- 'New Zealand', BSMT Space, London (2015)
- Jewish Artists in Yorkshire, The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds (2013)
- Alone in the Land - Landscapes of England (touring exhibition), Leeds University Gallery, The Gallery in Cork Street, Rhyl Art Gallery, Usher Gallery (2005-2006)
- Lincoln - All the Secret Places, Lincoln Cathedral (2002)
- Lydia Bauman, Catto Gallery, London (2001)
- Lydia Bauman: Places, Landscapes, Moreton Street Gallery, London (2001)
- Journeys of Faith, The Gallery, Lincoln (2000)
- Highways and Byways (touring exhibition), Falmouth Art Gallery, Leeds University Gallery, Liverpool University Gallery (1999)
- In Search of the Promised Land: Paintings of Israel, Catto Gallery, London (1997)
- Paintings by Lydia Bauman, Gallery B, London (1994)
- Mixed Metaphors, Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London (1988)
- BIGOS: Artists of Polish Origin, Brixton Gallery, London (1986)
- Lydia Bauman, Leigh Gallery, London (1986)
- Six Polish Women Artists, POSK, London (1986)
- Lydia Bauman, Leigh Gallery, London (1985)
Ben Uri archive
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Lydia Bauman]
Ben Uri library
Publications related to [Lydia Bauman] in the Ben Uri Library