Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1973 Temesvár, Austria-Hungary (now Timișoara, Romania)

Died: 1943 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1939

Other name/s: Alexander Járay, Alexander Sándor Járay, Sándor Jeiteles, Sándor Járay

Biography

Sculptor and actor Alexander Járay (also known as Jaray) was born Sándor Jeiteles to Hungarian-Jewish parents in Temesvár, Transylvania, Austria-Hungary (now Timisoara, Romania) in 1873. His father, Sigmund was an architect and owned a furniture company with his brother, also called Sándor (1845–1916), and there is often confusion between them in secondary sources, as they both worked in Vienna as sculptors and interior designers in the fin de siècle. The family changed their surname to Jaray soon after Alexander's birth, also moving to the lively cultural centre of Vienna, where they numbered celebrities including Sigmund Freud and actor Josef Kainz, among their close acquaintances. Jaray's father wished his son to continue the family business, which specialised in reconstructing historical interiors (the firm was invited to present a Biedermeier room design at the 1902 London Furniture Exhibition), but aware of his artistic ambitions, also encouraged him to study sculpture. Jaray attended the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna from 1888–95, studying under the academic sculptors Edmund von Hellmer and Caspar von Zumbusch. After graduating, however, he initially pursued a theatrical career, taking acting classes from Professor Leo Friedrich, and subsequently moving to Berlin to further his studies. Simultaneously, he continued to sculpt and, while working upon the stage, also won a scholarship for his sculpture Sleepwalker, which enabled him to move to Italy for a year in 1899 (eight months of which he spent in Rome). He specialised in graceful figures of women, partly influenced by the Wiener Secession, and portrait busts in marble, bronze, and wood. His most memorable sitters of this period include fellow artist, Max Liebermann, who was working in the German capital when he posed for Jaray in 1898. In Berlin, Jaray met his first wife Karolina Nagy-Buck, whom he married in 1905; they had a son, Stephan, a year later. In the 1910s they returned to Vienna, where Jaray contributed to the satirical magazine Die Muskete. During the First World War he served in the army and was stationed in Trutnov, Bohemia, working as a grave memorial artist from 1916, before returning to Vienna. Following Karolina's death in 1936, Jaray married Lea Bondi, the Viennese art dealer and gallerist, also of Jewish origin.

Following the 1938 Anschluss (annexation) of Austria, the couple fled Vienna, leaving behind Jaray's studio and Lea's Galerie Würthle, both confiscated by the Nazis. Jaray's son, Stephan, was arrested and interned in Dachau and subsequently in Buchenwald concentration camps but was released after nine months and managed to get a visa to Australia. In 1939 Jaray and Lea Bondi-Jaray settled in London, where she went on to establish another gallery, and he continued making portrait busts and received international commissions for commemorative sculptures, including the monument to Theodor Herzl located at the entrance to the Tel Aviv Law School, and the large-scale work To Zion that stands in front of The Museum of Art, Ein Harod, in Israel. By the end of his life, Jaray had achieved moderate success in England: he exhibited in The FGLC and AIA Exhibition of Sculptures and Drawings in July 1941, one of the most significant of the interwar sculpture shows, which included 95 works by 31 artists. In an introduction, headed 'Sculpture and Pottery', art historian Herbert Read noted that most of the exhibitors had been 'uprooted, deprived of their studios, their materials, their very tools. They work tentatively, with great difficulty without adequate economic support in their exile. But even so they represent a tradition of which we in England know too little'. Jaray showed two works: Max Reinhardt and Leidenschaft. The following spring Jaray participated in a Refugee artist exhibition in Birmingham, organised by the committee of European Clubs, which also included works by Karl Vogel and Paul Koenigsberger, Spanish scenes by Arthur Segal and comic scenes by Walter Trier, among other German, Austrian, Czech, Polish and Romanian artists, with the proceeds going to the Red Cross Fund for Allied prisoners of war. In the same year, Jaray also exhibited a bust entitled An Actor at the 1942 Royal Academy summer exhibition, and in 1943 a head of Lloyd George in A New Year Exhibition of Modern Pictures and Sculpture at the Leicester Galleries, Leicester Square, London, among other works by artists including Jacob Epstein and Dame Laura Knight. Jaray lived at 13 Thurlow Road, Hampstead, and died in Hendon, London 5 July 1943; he was buried in Golder's Green Cemetery in London. His work was posthumously included in the Ben Uri Gallery's 1944 opening exhibition at 14 Portman Street, followed by a memorial exhibition in 1952; with another at Claridge's Gallery in the same year. Jaray's work can be found in UK public collections including the Guildhall Art Gallery, London (bronze of Beethoven).

Related books

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.
Alexander Sandor Jaray: Memorial Exhibition catalogue (London: Claridge, Lewis and Jordan Ltd., 1952)

Public collections

Guildhall Art Gallery

Related organisations

Royal Academy (exhibitor)

Selected exhibitions

Alexander Sandor Jaray memorial exhibition, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1952)
A New Year exhibition of modern pictures and sculpture, Leicester Galleries, Leicester Square, London (1943)
Refugee Artists Exhibition of Works, Barrow’s Stores, Corporation Street, Birmingham (1942)
Annual Exhibition of the Royal Academy (1942)
FGLC and AIA Exhibition of Sculptures and Drawings (1941)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Alexander Jaray]