Arnold Daghani was born Arnold Korn to a Jewish family living in Suczawa, Austria-Hungary (now Suceava, Romania) in 1909; he studied art informally in Munich and Paris in the 1920s. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, he was sent in 1942 to Mykhailivka (Mikhailowka) concentration camp in the Ukraine, where he made sketches of inmates and officers. Post-war he returned to Romania, before moving with his wife to Israel in 1958, then to France and Switzerland, and finally to England in 1977; The Arnold Daghani Collection at the University of Sussex holds his 6,000 piece archive including artworks, letters and prose by the artist.
Painter, writer, and illustrator Arnold Daghani was born Arnold Korn to a Jewish family living in Suczawa, Austria-Hungary (now Suceava, Romania) on 22 February 1909. He studied fine art in Munich and Paris during the 1920s but received no formal qualification. A gifted linguist, he then moved to Bucharest and found work as an export clerk. It was at this time that he changed his surname from Korn to Daghani. In 1940, after their house was destroyed in an earthquake, he move with his wife, Anisoara, to Czernowitz (now Chernivtsi), from where they were deported to the Czernowitz Ghetto. In 1942 they were transferred to Mykhailivka (Mikhailowka), a concentration camp in the Ukraine. Daghani secretly smuggled his art supplies and a diary with him, and while imprisoned, he made haunting sketches of prisoners (many who subsequently were murdered) and officers, and recorded his experiences in his diary. In June 1943 the couple were transported to Gaisin and ordered to make a mural for the headquarters of the August Dohrmann Company. From here they were able to escape to Bucharest, and in December 1943 they were liberated from the Bershad Ghetto. Postwar, Daghani earned his living as an English translator and tutor while working as an artist but, at odds with the Romanian regime and its Socialist realist art, the couple moved to Israel in 1958 (leaving behind more than 900 artworks). They later moved to France and Switzerland, before immigrating to England in 1977. They settled on the south coast and Daghani's first exhibition, A relentless Spirit in Art 1944–1984, was held at Brighton Polytechnic (now University of Brighton) in 1984, a year before his death. Daghani lived a fragmented life of upheaval and change, which he documented through his art and writings, suffering from chronic depression and occasional suicidal tendencies. He created detailed journals and sketchbooks, where writing held equal importance with illustration. He produced art constantly, from everyday images of daily life, ranging from still-life drawings and collages to detailed depictions of present and past events, sometimes traumatic, and often drawing on Jewish culture. His narrative of his time at Mykhailivka was published in three languages: Romanian (1947), German (1960), and English (1961). In 2009 his diary was re-published in English, alongside his sketches and portraits of the ghettoes and concentration camps.
Arnold Daghani died in Hove, England, on 6 April 1985. His work is held in UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the University of Surrey, and Warwick University. A total of 6,000 items, including letters and prose by the artist, are held in The Arnold Daghani Collection at the University of Sussex, their acquisition supported by art historian, Norbert Lynton, then Professor of Art History. Lynton observed: ‘As a refugee who has lost many relatives and some childhood friends in the Holocaust, I could not but be sympathetic' (Ahronovitz, 2012).
In 1992 a posthumous Daghani Festival presented three London exhibitions including Drawings by Arnold Daghani, opened by Monica Bohm-Duchen at Ben Uri Gallery in Dean Street, Soho, to coincide with the publication of The Seven Days of Schlemihl, written and illustrated by Daghani; a retrospective at the Barbican Centre; and a selling exhibition presented at John Bonham/Murray Feely Fine Art, 46 Porchester Road. In 1998 Daghani's work was included in a group show Characters from the Bible, curated by Ben Uri at Etz Chaim Gallery, Northwood. His work has also been included posthumously in group shows including No Set Rules – A Century of Selected Works from the Schlee Collection Southampton and Ben Uri Permanent Collection (2015) and in Art-exit: 1939 – A Very Different Europe, held at the European Commission's 12 Star Gallery in London (2019). Guildford Cathedral exhibited his painting Stations of the Cross in 2014. In 2012 Daghani's featured as one of 21 artists in Last Portrait: Painting for Posterity, presented by Yad Vashem (Israel's Holocaust memorial museum) in Jerusalem.
Arnold Daghani in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Arnold Daghani]
Publications related to [Arnold Daghani] in the Ben Uri Library