Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1889 Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria)

Died: 1975 Mousehole, Cornwall, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1938

Other name/s: Albert Reuß

Biography

Painter and sculptor Albert Reuss was born to a Hungarian-Jewish family in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) in 1899. Although he was ill for much of his childhood Reuss began to show artistic talent from the age of five and was encouraged by his wealthy uncle, Baron Andreas Ritter von Reisinger. He applied, unsuccessfully, to the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna, but was determined to teach himself to paint and began copying the Old Masters in the Belvedere Gallery. Although he obtained a number of private portrait commissions, in order to support himself financially, he was also forced to undertake various unsatisfactory jobs, including working alongside his father as a butcher. On the outbreak of the First World War, he was conscripted into the army but remained confined to Vienna due to his poor health. In 1915 he met Rosa Feinstein, who would later become his wife, agent, and manager. After their wedding in December 1916, Reuss contracted tuberculosis, spending the next 18 months in a sanatorium, where he painted portraits of his fellow patients. By the early 1920s, however, the couple had moved into an apartment, where Reuss established a studio and focused on portraiture and line drawings, and in 1922 they converted to Christianity. Reuss made excursions to the south of France (Cannes), Italy and the Netherlands to further his autodidactic studies in painting and, following two successful solo shows at the Galerie Würthle in Vienna, he became a member of the artists' association, the Hagenbund, frequently exhibiting under their aegis from 1925 and throughout the 1930s. In 1934, he also took up sculpting.

Following the Anschluss (annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany) in 1938, at the height of his artistic fame, Reuss and his wife were forced to flee Vienna. Most of their belongings, including Reuss' early works, were confiscated by the government. They arrived in London, but with the help of John Sturge Stephens, a pacifist from a noted Cornish Quaker family, who had offered them his cottage, soon moved to St Mawes in Cornwall. In 1938 Reuss held two exhibitions in local galleries, aiming to establish his reputation as an artist in Britain. Two years later, Reuss and his wife were interned as enemy aliens in Shropshire for two months from June 1940. On their release, they moved to Cheltenham in Gloucestershire and were granted British nationality in 1947. The following year, they returned to Cornwall, settling in Mousehole, where they established the ARRA Gallery with fellow artist, Ruth Adams. (In 1939 Ruth and her parents had moved to Mousehole from the north of England and later that year they welcomed émigré artist, Freda Salvendy (1887 – 1965) into their home, according to the 1939 census). Tragically, four weeks after their arrival, Adams was killed in an accident and ownership of the ARRA Gallery passed to Reuss.

Although he continued to paint, Reuss abandoned the colourful flamboyance of his Viennese years. The experience of exile resulted in a dramatic change of style and subject matter and he began to produce dark, deserted landscapes as well to depict elongated figures with their backs turned away from the viewer. In 1945 his work was exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Salford Museum and Art Gallery in Greater Manchester and the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle, and in 1955 it was included in an Exhibition of Recent Acquisitions by the Friends of the Art Museums of Israel held at Ben Uri Gallery; in 1961 his work was included in Ben Uri's annual fundraising Picture Fair. Meanwhile, Rosa managed the ARRA Gallery until its closure in 1956. In their latter years, both suffered ill-health: Rosa died in Mousehole in 1970 and Albert died five years later on 4 November 1975. In 2017 a biographical study of the artist entitled Albert Reuss in Mousehole: The Artist as Refugee by Susan Soyinka was published by Sansom & Co. In the same year an exhibition of the same name was presented at the Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance, while an exhibition of Reuss's work was held at Truro Cathedral to mark Holocaust Memorial Day in 2020. His work is held in a number of public collections in the UK including Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Related books

Susan Soyinka, Albert Reuss in Mousehole: The Artist as Refugee (Warwick: Sansom & Co, 2017)
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

Public collections

Related organisations

ARRA Gallery (owner, exhibitor)
Hagenbund (member)

Selected exhibitions

Albert Reuss, Truro Cathedral (2020)
Albert Reuss: the Artist as a Refugee, Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance (2017)
Exhibition of Cornish Artists Penlee House Gallery and Museum, Penzance (2015)
Reuss: Retrospective exhibition, Stable Gallery, Brighton (1989)
Quintinilla & Albert Reuss paintings, O'Hana Gallery (1974)
Picture Fair, Ben Uri Gallery (1961)
Friends of Israel, Ben Uri Gallery (1955)
Albert Reuss, O'Hana Gallery (1953)
Drawings by Albert Reuss, ARRA Gallery (1949)
Albert Reuss, Salford Museum and Art Gallery (1945)
Albert Reuss, Laing Art Gallery (1945)
Exhibition of Drawings, Paintings & Sculpture: Albert Reuss, Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (1945)
Exhibition of Sculpture, Drawings and Paintings, Cheltenham Art Gallery (1944)
Exhibition of Paintings, Gas Company Showroom, Truro (1939)
Albert Reuss, Lanham's Gallery, St Ives (1938)
Exhibition Of Drawings, Cartref Studio, St. Mawes (1938)
Solo exhibitions, Galerie Würthle, Vienna (1926, 1930)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Albert Reuss]