Naum Slutzky was born into a Jewish family in Kiev, Russian Empire (now Kyiv, Ukraine) in 1894. He worked for the Wiener Werkstätte, then studied engineering while training at Johannes Itten's private art school, before being appointed to the Bauhaus in Weimar as a metal and goldsmithing assistant in 1919. In 1933 he fled to Britain, where he held post-war appointments at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, the Royal College of Art, Birmingham School of Arts and Crafts, and Ravensbourne College of Art, Bromley.
Modernist designer and goldsmith Naum Slutzky was born in Kiev in the Russian Empire (now Kyiv, Ukraine) in 1894, into a Jewish family, the son of goldsmith Gilel Slutzky, who worked for the firm of Carl Fabergé in Kiev. In order to ecape anti-Jewish pogroms, the Slutzky family emigrated, settling in Vienna in 1905, where Naum first trained as a jeweller under Anton Diamant (1867–1922) and, in 1908, enrolled in a three-year goldsmithing apprenticeship. From 1912–13 Slutzky worked for the artisans co-operative Wiener Werkstätte, before studying engineering at the Technische Universität Wien (1914–19), while also training at Johannes Itten's private art school (1917–19). In 1919 Itten was appointed to the Bauhaus in Weimar and recommended Slutzky, who was subsequently appointed assistant in the metal and goldsmithing workshops in late 1919, working with Christian Dell and László Moholy-Nagy. Slutzky met his first wife, embroiderer, and illustrator Hedwig Arnheim (1894–1944), while at the Bauhaus (thet divorced in 1930). By 1922, he was a master goldsmith, but by 1924, had left to work as a freelance designer in both Vienna and Berlin, working in the latter city with fellow Bauhäusler Frederika 'Friedl' Dicker-Brandeis and Franz Singer. From 1927–33, Slutzky worked as an interior designer, lighting consultant and goldsmith for the retailer Kaufmann of Hamburg. He also participated in the 1928 Hamburg Secession exhibition, the 1930 Hamburg Neue Secession at the Hamburg Kunsthalle, and the 1931 Hamburg Secession exhibition at the Kunstverein, as well as the Deutsche Werkbund exhibition at the Societé des Artistes Décorateurs in Paris in 1930. During this time Slutzky met several important patrons including architect Fritz Block and artist Gesche Ochs, who participated in two Ben Uri exhibitions in 1950 and 1952 (several objects designed by Slutzky from Ochs' collection are now in the Victoria & Albert Museum collection). Another key contact was Max Sauerlandt, director of the Hamburg Museum of Arts and Crafts and a keen supporter of modernism, who commissioned Slutzky and organised an exhibition of his work at the museum in 1929. Slutzky's other commissions included designing the interior and lighting of the Israelite Temple in Oberstrasse, Hamburg.
Fearing racial persecution and suffering from the increasing limitations imposed on the avant-garde following the closure of the Bauhaus, Slutzky fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and settled in Britain. In 1937, 22 of his artworks at the Hamburg Museum of Art and Crafts were declared 'degenerate' and confiscated by the Nazi authorities. In Britain, Slutzky lived at the Lawn Road Flats in Hampstead, which served as a London base for several fellow Bauhäusler including Gropius, Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer. With Gropius's help Slutzky was employed as an art teacher at the progressive school Dartington Hall in Totnes, Devon from 1934–40, and Gropius also probably introduced him to the the progressive Birmingham-based lighting manufacturer Best&Lloyd, whose products were installed at the Lawn Road Flats; Slutzky freelanced for them as a designer from 1936–37. Following the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, and the introduction of internment for so-called 'enemy aliens' in 1940, Slutzky was interned on the Isle of Man until 1942. Afterwards, Slutzky remained at Lawn Road until 1946. Post-war he became a tutor in jewellery design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London (1946–50) and lecturer in Product Design in the Department of Industrial Design at the Royal College of Art (1950–57). He spent the final years of his career as Senior Lecturer in, and later Head of, Product Design at the Birmingham School of Arts and Crafts (1957–64), and Professor of Industrial Design at Ravensbourne College of Art, Bromley (1965), an esteemed institution whose teaching style at the time was referred to as a 'successful mix of Modernism, the Bauhaus and the classical' (A. Nyburg, From Leipzig to London: The Life and Work of the Émigré Artist Hellmuth Weissenborn, p. 119). As Leyla Daybelge writes, 'Of all the Bauhaus masters who passed through Lawn Road, [Slutzky] was the only one directly to hold a teaching position in Britain and thus to pass on the school's pioneering philosophy of uniting art and industry.' (Insiders Outsiders, p. 171). Slutzky died in Stevenage in Hertforshire in 1965. His designs are held by the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, as well as the Nationalmuseum Stockholm, Hamburg Museum of Arts and Crafts, Pinakothek der Moderne, and the Bauhaus-Archiv. In 2012, a female bust by Slutzky was excavated in Berlin, together with 15 other modernist sculptures that had been selected for the 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition and were previously considered lost. In 2019 Slutzky's designs were included in the Spotlight Display: The Bauhaus and Britain at Tate Britain.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Naum Slutzky]
Publications related to [Naum Slutzky] in the Ben Uri Library