Bruno Simon was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria, in 1920 and studied in Freiburg, Germany, and in Paris, France. In August 1939, he fled from the Nazi regime to England, and, in 1940, as an ‘enemy alien’ was sent to Australia on board the infamous troop ship, HMT Dunera. Interned in Tatura and Hay camps until 1943, he produced artwork documenting his experience. Postwar, he established a career as a sculptor, leaving Australia in 1949 for England, where he remained until 1967, when he finally settled in Italy.
Sculptor and printmaker Bruno Simon was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) on 21 January 1913. During the 1930s he studied with Julius Bissier in Freiburg, Germany; then in Paris, under Maillol and Mallfray at the Académie Rason; and finally, in Florence and Carrara in Italy, before fleeing to England in August 1939 on the eve of war. He was first recorded at Kitchener Refugee Camp at Richborough in Kent, before his Enemy Alien tribunal in October classed him as Category C: 'a genuine refugee from Nazi oppression'. His registration card lists his occupation as ‘Camp Sculptor’. However, after the fall of France and the government's directive to 'collar the lot', he was interned on 12 May 1940 on the Isle of Man, first at Mooragh Camp in Ramsey, then at Douglas Central Camp, before boarding the infamous HMT Dunera in Liverpool on 10 July. The internees were badly treated by the British guards during the nine week voyage to Australia and conditions were squalid and overcrowded, with insufficient rations. The ship also survived a U-boat attack.
In Australia, Simon was interned in Hay Camp 7 from 6 September 1940 to 5 May 1941, then transferred to Tatura Camp 3. In camp he produced sculpture, monotypes and drawings of generalised camp topographies. Roger Butler has written: ‘Like much of Hirschfeld Mack’s camp art, there is an underlying sense of spirituality and desire for a unified humanity in Simon’s work', further observing that 'For Simon, the ultimate desire for love, over[rode] cultural and religious differences.' After release on 28 January 1942, Simon spent four years in the Australian Labour Battalion, while continuing his artistic practice. In 1946 he had a solo exhibition at Kozminsky's Gallery in Melbourne, became a naturalised Australian citizen and was commended as one of the 'Artists of all types who had come to Australia from Europe during the last 10 years and done much to improve the cultural life of this country' (The Age, 2 October 1946). In 1948 he was a finalist for the Wynne Prize for art in New South Wales with sculptures, Boy's Head (aka David), made from baked earth, and a terracotta Chinese Girl (aka Head of a Girl), which he brought with him to England in 1949 (and which later entered the Ben Uri Collection), along with a bronze Head of a Small Boy (1946, Nottingham Castle Collection). According to their records, Bruno Simon was the great-grandson of Philip Simon, of the celebrated Simon May lace company, founded in Nottingham in 1849.
Simon settled in London and by October 1949 was living at 14 Percival Avenue, London NW3. His work featured in the Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Jewish Painters and Sculptors at Ben Uri in 1950, followed by a three-person show, Michel Kikoine (Paintings and Water Colours), Zechariahu Erlichman (Water Colours), Bruno Simon (Sculpture) in 1951, when his sculptures were praised in the Jewish Chronicle for their 'freshness'. He also exhibited at the Institut Français in 1955, when the Chronicle again commended him as ‘a quiet craftsman, modelling or carving directly or in the abstract according to the problem he is faced with’. In the same year, he was a recipient of a Fellowship grant for refugees from the German Claims Conference, alongside art historian Helen Rosenau and painter Else Meidner. His work also featured in an exhibition at the St John’s Wood Communal Centre (1962).
Simon continued to travel widely, spending some time in Israel before settling in Italy in 1967, where he established a studio in a converted stable in Bergamo in Lombardy, returning briefly to Australia in 1973 and 1993; during the former, he was described by The Canberra Times, as 'a German sculptor now living in Italy, who has returned to Australia after 24 years for a six-month reconnaissance'. His influences were cited as Ernst Barlach and Henry Moore and his subjects as portraiture and animal subjects. In 1987 he published Tatura Dreams, a portfolio of prints commemorating his Australian internment.
Bruno Simon died in Bergamo, Italy on 16 September 1999. In the UK his work is held in the Ben Uri Collection and Nottingham City Museums and Galleries. In 1997 Simon was one of four Dunera artists featured in 'Images of Displacement: Art from the internment camps', by Magdalene Keaney in The Europeans: Émigré artists in Australia 1930-1960, accompanying the exhibition of the same name at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. His life and career were discussed by Sarah MacDougall in an (unpublished) conference paper, "‘A Continental Atmosphere': Austrian émigré sculptors in Wartime and Reconstruction Britain: Siegfried Charoux, Georg Ehrlich, Willi Soukop and Bruno Simon", at the Austrian Cultural Forum, London (2012). His work has featured in exhibitions at Ben Uri: Out of Austria: Austrian Artists in Exile in Great Britain, 1933-45 (2018) and Heads: In and Out of Time - Lancelot Ribeiro (2024).
Bruno Simon in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Bruno Simon]
Publications related to [Bruno Simon] in the Ben Uri Library