Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Benno Elkan artist

Benno Elkan was born into a Jewish family in Dortmund, Germany in 1877 and studied painting at the Munich Academy and sculpture in Rome and Paris. Following Hitler's accession to the German chancellorship, he was labelled 'degenerate' and fled to England in 1933. He became celebrated for bronzes including decorative candelabra and portrait busts including Toscanini and Sir Winston Churchill.

Born: 1877 Dortmund, Germany

Died: 1960 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1933

Other name/s: Benno Elkan OBE


Biography

Sculptor Benno Elkan was born into a Jewish family on 2 December 1877 in Dortmund, Germany, and studied languages in Lausanne before becoming a merchant in Antwerp. He moved to Munich to study painting at the Academy, then to Karlsruhe to study sculpture, before visiting Paris, where he encountered Rodin and Matisse, and finally Rome. Elkan married the daughter of a Rabbi, pianist Hedwig Einstein, and they later moved to Frankfurt am Main with their children.

Following Hitler's accession to the Chancellorship and the introduction of anti-Semitic legislation, the couple immigrated to London in 1933 and Elkan's work was included in his absence in the notorious Entartete Kunst ('Degenerate Art') exhibition launched in Munich in July 1937. Two of his sculptures also featured in the Exhibition of German-Jewish Artists' Work: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture (5–15 June 1934) organised at the Parsons Gallery, London by German-Jewish émigré dealer, Carl Braunschweig (later Charles Brunswick) to support artists suffering persecution under the Nazi regime. In 1936 Elkan exhibited ‘forceful portrait sculpture’ in a solo show at the Knoedler Gallery, alongside bronze candelabra and ‘excellent medallions’ (Gordon 1936, p. 16). Elkan first showed in a mixed exhibition of works by contemporary Jewish artists at Ben Uri Gallery in 1935 and subsequently participated in at least 17 Ben Uri exhibitions between 1944 and 1994. He also showed with the London Group and was a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy of Arts. Importantly, for the disemination of modern german art in England, he showed three works (heads of Prince Edward, Toscanini and the German-Jewish art dealer, Alfred Flechtheim) in the Exhibition of Twentieth Century German Art held in July 1938 at the New Burlington Galleries in London, designed as a riposte to the Nazi 'Degenerate Art' show. In the same year, he exhibited his statue of Sir Walter Raleigh (the first to be erected in Britain) at Claridge’s Hotel, prior to being installed over the entrance to Godfrey Phillip’s tobacco factory on Commercial Street in the East End. Raleigh, who introduced tobacco to England, was represented with a spray of tobacco leaves in his hands, against a backdrop of glass engraved with a ship in full sail, for which Elkan studied the engraving of the Ark Royal at the British Museum. Among other works exhibited were busts of the Abbott of Buckfast Abbey; the assassinated German-Jewish statesman Walter Rathenau; James de Rothschild; and Toscanini. Elkan also produced lifelike busts of Sir Winston Churchill (completed before he met his subject and largely based on observations of Churchill in the Commons and on public occasions); Lord Beveridge (erected in Balliol College, Oxford); Lord Keynes (at King’s College Cambridge) and the art patron, Samuel Courtauld (Courtauld Collection). In 1940 Elkan produced ‘delightfully modelled’ characters of the Jungle Book and a plaque in lead for the Rudyard Kipling Memorial Building at Windsor (The Times 1940, p. 3).

Elkan also created works with a religious or biblical element; the Knesset Menorah in Jerusalem (outside the parliament building) featured engravings of biblical themes and significant events from the history of the Jewish people. His Old Testament and New Testament Candelabra , seven feet high and about six feet wide and incorporating around 80 figures, were first exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1938 and subsequently donated by Arthur Hamilton Lee to Westminster Abbey in 1939 and 1942. The Times noted: ‘it is generally agreed that it is one of the most outstanding and imaginative works in bronze produced in our times […] The powerful black columns which flank it, and the delicate Gothic shrine stonework behind it, form a satisfying setting for a masterpiece of religious art’ (23 December 1939, p. 9). Other bronze candelabra with Biblical scenes are held at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge and New College, Oxford, while a candelabrum with the four cardinal virtues is held at Buckfast Abbey in Devon. An article in Country Life devoted to Elkan’s candelabra commented: ‘The figures on these candlesticks have the energy and the expression of some of the great Italian Renaissance Bronzes, but the manner in which they are welded into the design is typically Northern’ (26 November 1938, p. 539). Elkan also designed Frankfurt’s Great War Memorial, which included mourning mothers as a symbol of loss in the First World War (removed by the Nazis in 1933, it was re-erected in 1946).

Postwar, Elkan was involved with the Ben Uri Arts Committee and gave talks on art, including ‘The Third Hand of Rodin’ at the International Arts Centre in 1946. Elkan was awarded an OBE in 1957 for his services to the arts. Benno Elkan died in London, England on 10 January 1960. His work is represented in numerous UK collections, including the Ben Uri Collection, The Courtauld Gallery Collection, and the Parliamentary Art Collection.

Related books

  • Peter Wakelin, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art (Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2019)
  • 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
  • Wolf Elkan, 'Und ich war davon überzeugt, dass es nur ein Land gab, in dem ich leben wollte: Deutschland', in Sylke Bartmann, Ursula Blömer and Detlef Garz eds., Wir waren die Staatsjugend, aber der Staat war schwach.' Jüdische Kindheit und Jugend in Deutschland und Österreich zwischen Kriegsende und nationalsozialistischer Herrschaft (Oldenburg, 2003), pp. 143-149
  • Ray McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Glasgow (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002), p. 431
  • Fritz Hofmann, Benno Elkan: Ein jüdischer Künstler aus Dortmund (Essen, 1997)
  • Hans Menzel-Severing, Der Bildhauer Benno Elkan, PhD Dissertation (Dortmund: Verlag des Historischen Vereins Dortmund, 1980)
  • 'Obituary. Benno Elkan', The Guardian, 12 January 1960, p. 2
  • Kenneth Romeny Towndrow, 'Project for a Great Menorah I. The Sculptor Benno Elkan', The Menorah Journal, Vol. 37, No. 2, 1949
  • 'Rudyard Kipling Memorial', The Times, 8 January 1940, p. 3
  • 'Bronze Candelabrum For The Abbey', The Times, 23 December 1939, p. 9
  • 'Biblical Candlesticks', Country Life, Vol. 84, 26 November 1938, pp. 538-539
  • Jan Gordon, 'Art and Artists: Portraits of the Trilemma', The Observer, 29 November 1936, p. 16
  • Ernst Blass, 'Benno Elkan', Die Kunst, Monatshefte für freie und angewandte Kunst, Vol. 31, 1915

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Munich Royal Academy (student)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Selected Works from the Permanent Collection, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1980)
  • Exhibition of Recent Acquisitions, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1962)
  • Selections from the Permanent Collection, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1960)
  • Tercentenary Exhibition of Contemporary Anglo-Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1956)
  • Festival of Britain: Anglo-Jewish Exhibition, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1951)
  • Sculpture by Benno Elkan, Wildenstein Gallery, London (1950)
  • Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Jewish Painters and Sculptors, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1950)
  • Contemporary Jewish Artists: Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1949)
  • Exhibition of Jewish Art, arranged by the Ben Uri Art Gallery, North Western Reform Synagogue, London (1948)
  • London Group exhibition, Suffolk Street, London (1947)
  • Spring Exhibition of Painting, Sculpture and Drawings by Contemporary Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1947)
  • Subjects of Jewish Interest: Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1946)
  • Exhibition of Portraits by Contemporary Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1945)
  • Summer Exhibition of Paintings, Sculptures and Drawings by Contemporary Artists, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1944)
  • Statue of Sir Walter Raleigh and Other Sculptures, Claridge’s Hotel, London (1938)
  • Exhibition of Twentieth Century German Art, New Burlington Galleries, London (1938)
  • Arts and Crafts Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (1938)
  • Recent Sculpture by Benno Elkan, Galerie Knoedler, London (1936)
  • Annual Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (1935)
  • Annual Exhibition of Works by Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1935)
  • Exhibition of German-Jewish Artists' Work: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Parsons Gallery, London (1934)
  Benno Elkan
   
Ben Uri collection

Benno Elkan in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Benno Elkan]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Benno Elkan] in the Ben Uri Library