Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1928 Paris, France

Died: 2015 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1934

Biography

Painter Dora Holzhandler was born to Polish-Jewish parents in Paris, France on 22 March 1928. Her father was a handbag maker and her mother, a singer and seamstress. After the collapse of her father’s business, her parents placed her with a Catholic farming family in Normandy, where she spent five 'idyllic' years. Returning to Paris, her mother supported them while her father sought medical treatment in London. In Paris, Holzhandler’s maternal grandfather, a rabbi, fuelled her interest in Jewish traditions.

In 1934 Holzhandler and her mother joined her father in London, living in a flat opposite a synagogue in Dalston. She reflected, 'Jewish life in the East End was very vividly imprinted in me' (Vann, 2011). During the war, Holzhandler was evacuated to Norfolk, while many members of her wider family perished, including her maternal grandfather whom she memorialised in her only work to directly reference the Holocaust, My Grandfather in Auschwitz (Ben Uri Collection). In 1941 she moved to Suffolk with her mother, attending West Suffolk County School in Bury St Edmunds. Postwar, Holzhandler returned briefly to study at the Sorbonne and L’Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris before re-settling in London, beginning her exhibiting career in the prestigious Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) Young Contemporaries show in 1949. Between 1948 and 1950 she attended the Anglo-French Art School in St John’s Wood, where her now celebrated naïve style of painting, influenced by École de Paris artists, including Marc Chagall and Henri Matisse, was recognised and encouraged by British artist Victor Pasmore (Philip Vann, 2011, p. 3). There she also caught the eye of fellow pupil George Swinford, an aspiring jewellery designer, whom she married in 1950. She showed in a group exhibition in 1954 at the Beaux Arts Gallery, London and her work was acquired by Charlie Chaplin and refugee painter, Josef Herman, among others. During the 1960s the family lived a bohemian lifestyle with little money, in furnished rooms, and in the early 1970s relocated to Dumfries, Scotland.

Describing herself as a ‘Jew-Bu’, Holzhandler’s work often incorporates repeated iconography, mystical and religious symbolism, inspired by her dual beliefs in Judaism and Buddhism. In 1962 Eric Newton reviewed her solo exhibition at the Portal Gallery, Grafton Street, in the Guardian, 'Human sympathy, a love of children, an understanding of their winning ways, of the charm and quiet interplay of domestic life are her themes. […] her method of painting is […] oriental in origin, colourful as a Persian illumination, always bright, but never sharp. These are the pictures invented by a mother but painted by a child – a sophisticated but immensely amiable child` (Newton 1962, p. 7). Other solo exhibitions included: Langton Gallery (1972), Gordon Gallery, Derry (1987), Saint Mungo Museum of Jewish Life and Art, Glasgow (1994) and, more recently, Goldmark Gallery, Rutland (2014). Holzhandler was also closely connected with Ben Uri, represented in group and one-person shows over two decades, including Outside In or Inside Out: Dora Holzhandler – A Retrospective (2006). She also regularly donated works to the annual fundraising Picture Fair and was selected as a finalist/exhibitor for Ben Uri's International Jewish Artist of the Year Award (IJAYA) in 2001 (Candid Arts, London) and 2004 (Ben Uri Gallery). Her powerful portrait My Grandfather in Auschwitz (Ben Uri Collection) was exhibited posthumously in Art-exit: 1939 – A Very Different Europe, 12 Star Gallery, Europe House, London (2019); Migrations: Masterworks from the Ben Uri Collection, Gloucester Museum (2019); and Liberators: Extraordinary women artists from the Ben Uri Collection, Ben Uri Gallery (2018).

Stylistically, Holzhandler drew on folk art and children’s illustrations to tackle subjects from religious rituals and family history, to everyday pleasures such as buying bagels, walking in the park or visiting an ice cream parlour. Her compositions incorporate patchworked colour and chequered patterns, suggesting a quilt-like quality. Holzhandler was an intuitive painter, often working from memory, and eschewing perspective in her views of Holland Park and Notting Hill, and portraits of rabbis, lovers and mothers. 'Before Leonardo nobody used perspective,' she liked to point out. Art, she claimed, was a kind of religion. While acknowledging that she was inspired by multiple multicultural sources, including Persian miniatures, Oriental watercolours, the paintings of Douanier Rousseau and Amadeo Modigliani, she emphasised her own artistic journey as one of radical self-discovery, stating that ‘there are definitely rules in art. But I discover them and these are the answers. Here in my paintings are the rules I’ve found’ (Vann, 2011). There is an element of melancholic reverie and nostalgia associated with much of Holzhandler’s work, as well as what Irish novelist Edna O’Brien has described as ‘an ineffable tenderness’, yet her palette of vibrant turquoise, mauve and poppy-red oils is unquestionably optimistic. Holzhandler felt she was able to detach herself from her subjects, even those that were painfully personal. According to O’Brien, her paintings ‘make us recall our childhoods, our myths, our roots and if we have severed from these things they make us long for them in a palpable way’ (Vann, 2011). Dora Holzhandler died in London, England on 8 October 2015 at the age of 87. Her work is represented in the collections of the Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, Jewish Museum, London, and Museum of Modern Art, Glasgow, among others.

Related books

• Dora Holzhandler: A Celebration, Goldmark Gallery (2014)
• Susie Hodge, Why your five year old could not have done that: modern art explained (London: Thames & Hudson, 2012)
• Philip Vann, Dora Holzhandler (Uppingham: Goldmark Gallery, 2011)
• Dora Holzhandler, Dora Holzhandler: Lovers in Cornwall and Other Paintings (London: Piano Nobile Fine Paintings, 2008)
• 'Works Sparkle with Humanity', The Western Morning News, p. 28 (2008)
• Outside In or Inside Out: Dora Holzhandler – A Retrospective (London: Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, 2006)
• Phillip Vann, Dora Holzhandler, Paintings from St. Ives to Jerusalem (London: Piano Nobile, 2006)
• John Russell Taylor, Dora Holzhandler – The Dance of Life and Love (London: Piano Nobile Fine Paintings, 2004)
• ‘Books in Brief’, The Art Book 5, no. 4 (Blackwell Publishing, 1998)
• Philip Vann, Dora Holzhandler (London: Lund Humphries, 1997)
• Jewish Artists, The Ben Uri Collection (2nd edition), Ben Uri Gallery (1994)
• Philip Vann, Dora Holzhandler: Glasgow 90: Festival of Jewish Culture (London: Rona Gallery, 1990)
• Dora Holzhandler: Paintings and Watercolours (Graham Modern, 1985)
• Eric Newton, 'Camden Town and After', (The Guardian, 6 February, 1962), p. 7.

Public collections

• Ben Uri Collection
• Brighton and Hove Museums and Galleries
• Glasgow Museums Resource Centre
• Jewish Museum, London
• Museum of London
• Paintings in Hospitals
• Pallant House Gallery
• Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
• The Ruth Borchard Collection
• St Mungo Museum of Religious Art and Life

Related organisations

• Anglo-French Art School (student)
• Sorbonne (student)
• L’Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris (student)
• Royal Society of British Artists (exhibitor)

Related web links

• Dora Holzhandler Obituary, The Telegraph, 30 October 2015
• Dora Holzhandler Obituary, The Guardian, 22 October 2015
• How we met: Dora Holzhandler and Nigel Kennedy, The Independent, 14 April 2013
• Philip Vann, The Mystic Appeal of Dora the Primitive, Jewish Chronicle, 24 March 2011

Selected exhibitions

• Art-exit: 1939 – A Very Different Europe, 12 Star Gallery, Europe House (2019)
• Migrations: Masterworks from the Ben Uri Collection, Gloucester Museum (2019)
• Liberators: Extraordinary women artists from the Ben Uri Collection, Ben Uri Gallery (2018)
• Dora Holzhandler, Goldmark Gallery (2014)
• Dora Holzhandler, Goldmark Gallery (2011)
• Dora Holzhandler, retrospective exhibition, Great Atlantic Arwenack Street Gallery, Falmouth (2008)
• Dora Holzhandler: Original Paintings, Uppingham: Goldmark Gallery (2008)
• Outside In or Inside Out: Dora Holzhandler – A Retrospective, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2006)
• Dora Holzhandler: the Dance of Life and Love, Piano Nobile Fine Paintings (2004)
• International Jewish Artist of the Year (IJAYA), Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2006)
• Dora Holzhandler: New Paintings and Works on Paper, Piano Nobile Fine Paintings (2001)
• International Jewish Artist of the Year (IJAYA), Ben Uri Gallery at Candid Arts, London (2001)
• Dora Holzhandler, The Saint Mungo Museum of Jewish Life and Art, Glasgow (1994)
• Dora Holzhandler, Beaux Arts, Bath (1990)
• Dora Holzhandler: To Life! St. Mungo Gallery, Glasgow (c.1990)
• Dora Holzhandler: Paintings and Watercolours, Gordon Gallery, Derry (1987)
• Dora Holzhandler: Paintings of Jewish Life, Rona Gallery (1987)
• Four Naïve Painters at the Ben Uri, Ben Uri Art Society (1985)
• Dora Holzhandler, Crane Kalman Gallery (1985)
• Bob Bourne, Dora Holzhandler, John Reay, Michael Lewis, and Charlie Baird, Crane Kalman Gallery (1984)
• Walter Bell Currie, Su Dixon, Sylvia Emmons, Dora Holzhandler, Michael Lewis, Jonathan Routh, Edwina Sandys, Crane Arts (1980)
• Oil Paintings by Dora Holzhandler, London, Langton Gallery (1978)
• Dora Holzhandler, Peintre Naive, Langton Gallery (1972)
• Dora Holzhandler, Portal Gallery (1962)
• Exhibition of Paintings by Dora Holzhandler, Chenil Galleries (1960)
• Beaux Arts Gallery, London (1954)

 
   

Ben Uri collection

Dora Holzhandler in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Dora Holzhandler]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Dora Holzhandler] in the Ben Uri Library