Born: 1923 Vienna, Austria
Died: 2000 Boston, Lincolnshire
Year of Migration to the UK: 1939
Other name/s: Erich Deutsch, Eric Deutsch, Siegfried Steiner
Biography
Painter and etcher Eric Doitch was born Siegfried Steiner in Vienna, Austria on 17 May 1923, the son of a liaison between his father and the family housemaid, Golda Steiner. He was adopted by his father's strictly orthodox Jewish family and brought up by his father's wife, Liserl, taking the family name, Deutsch, which he later anglicised to Doitch.
While his father was in England on business, in 1938 Doitch and his family came under threat from anti-Semitic legislation under the Nazi regime after the Anschluss (German occupation of Austria). His father acquired a domestic visa for his wife to join him. At the British consulate, as it was Christmas Eve, she was allowed to add her son to her visa. Doitch thus arrived in England in 1939, settling in Maida Vale, in west London, an area popular with Jewish refugees. He became a member of Young Austria, a youth organisation founded locally, attached to the Austrian Centre (AC) in Paddington, and which provided assistance to young refugees, including writer Erich Fried and artist, Ernst Eisenmayer. Doitch was awarded a grant to enrol at St Martin's School of Art, but was forced to interrupt his studies as he was interned on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien during 1940–41, following the government's policy of mass internment. After his release and until the end of the war, he was employed as a lathe-turner in a munitions factory. Between 1945 and 1949 he studied at Camberwell School of Art, where his teachers, Victor Pasmore, Claude Rogers, William Palmer Robins and the etcher Andrew Freeth, were major influences, and he established close friendships with fellow Austrian refugees, Henry Inlander and the aforementioned Eisenmayer. In 1950 Doitch became a naturalised British subject and in 1951 he enrolled at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London, where he concentrated on painting. After a year, College principal Robin Darwin threatened Doitch and others with expulsion because he deemed their work inadequate. Although Darwin allowed Doitch to continue towards his diploma, he had to transfer to the engraving school, where his teachers included Edward Ardizzone and Robert Sargent Austin. Doitch graduated in 1954 with a dissertation on German artist Käthe Kollwitz. At the RCA Doitch also met artist Alice Mary Fitzpayne, whom he married in 1954, moving to Camberwell, South London.
Doitch exhibited a number of times with Ben Uri, initially in 1955 when he contributed a ‘most admirably done’ Breughelian scene of fish porters at Billingsgate to the Annual Exhibition (Jewish Chronicle, 6 May 1955, p. 30). He also participated in a joint exhibition with fellow émigrés Fritz Kramer and Lottie Reizenstein in 1956, and with Adéle Reifenberg and Emmanuel Levy in 1961. In a review of the latter, the Jewish Chronicle noted that Doitch’s ‘new etchings are technically as rich as lithographs. There is great strength, yet also sensitiveness and a painterly texture’ (21 April 1961, p. 37). Doitch’s subjects were drawn from daily postwar London life – bomb sites around Camberwell, Warwick Avenue underground station, children playing in the street, West Indian men on street corners, and burnt-out cars on wasteland. Other works took Jewish themes such as the Golem (from Jewish folklore) and the anguished image of Jewish women in Vienna forced to scrub the streets during the Nazi occupation. Doitch taught at various London art schools, including at Camberwell School of Art until the mid-1960s, followed by printmaking at Chelsea School of Art, and painting at the City & Guilds School of Art, in the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1976 he moved with his wife to New Bolingbroke in rural Lincolnshire, each establishing a painting studio at opposite ends of their home, a former vicarage. During this time, the fenlands north of Boston and Frieston Shore became a great source of inspiration for his landscape painting. Doitch also incorporated memories of his family who perished in the Holocaust into his studies of the countryside and the farming community around him. He remained artistically independent until the end of his life, and was a very private individual, forming strong friendships with fellow refugees including Elias Canetti (who bought several of his etchings), Erich Fried, and graphic artist, Helga Michie. Erich Doitch died in Boston, Lincolnshire, England on 7 June 2000. His work is represented in UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection, British Museum and Southwark Heritage Collection in London. His daughter Kathe Deutsch, an artist and art historian, has retained her father's German surname and is actively involved in promoting his legacy through talks and writing, most recently during the Insiders/Outsiders festival during 2019–21, celebrating the contribution of the so-called Hitler émigrés to British visual culture.
Related books
- Sonja Frank, Young Austria: ÖsterreicherInnen im Britischen Exil 1938–1947 (Wien: Verlag der Theodor Kramer Gesellschaft, 2014)
- Fran Lloyd, 'Forcing Artistic Careers in Exile: Ernst Eisenmayer and Kurt Weiler in 1940s Britain' in Burcu Dogramaci and Karin Wimmer, eds., Netzwerke des Exils (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2012), pp. 243, 244, 250 and 254
- 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
- David Buckman, 'Obituary: Eric Doitch', Independent, 25 September 2000, p. 6
- 'Obituary of Eric Doitch', Daily Telegraph, 10 July 2000, p. 23
- 'Eric Doitch', The Times, 24 June 2000, p. 24
- 'Points of View: Paintings and Drawings by Eric Doitch, Mary Fitzpayne, Michael Markham', exh. cat., South London Art Gallery (1971)
- 'Old Friends', Jewish Chronicle, 21 April 1961, p. 37
- Jewish Chronicle, 6 May 1955, p. 30
Public collections
Related organisations
- Camberwell School of Art (student)
- Chelsea School of Art (teacher)
- City and Guilds School of Art (teacher)
- Royal College of Art (student)
Related web links
- Eric Doitch entry, British Museum
- Erich Doitch obituary in AJR Information
- Talk about Eric Doitch and Mary Fitzpayne by their daughter, artist and art historian, Kathe Deutsch, Insiders/Outsiders Festival
Selected exhibitions
- Exhibition of Recent Acquisitions 2001-2006, Ben Uri Gallery (2006)
- Lincolnshire Artist’s Society (2001)
- Boston Guildhall, Boston, Lincolnshire (2001)
- Robert Christian Gallery, Boston, England (1995)
- Lincolnshire Sculpture Projects (1990)
- Nigel’s Arts, Boston, Lincolnshire (1988)
- Usher Gallery, Lincoln (1983)
- Paintings, Drawings, Prints by Mary Fitzpayne and Eric Doitch, 1719 Gallery, Spilsby, England (1981)
- Eric Doitch and Mary Fitzpayne, Lufthansa, Piccadilly (1973)
- Points of View: Paintings and Drawings by Eric Doitch, Mary Fitzpayne, Michael Markham, South London Art Gallery (1971)
- Exhibition of Lithographs, Etchings, Woodcuts and Screen Prints, Ben Uri Gallery (1967)
- Pictures for the Home, Ben Uri Gallery (1965)
- Annual Summer Exhibition, Ben Uri Gallery (1964)
- The South London Art Group (1964)
- Eric Doitch, Adele Reifenberg, Emmanuel Levy Ben Uri Gallery (1961)
- Prints by Eric Doitch, Temple Gallery (1961)
- Annual Exhibition, Ben Uri Gallery (1958)
- Doitch, Kramer and Reizenstein, Ben Uri Gallery (1956)
- Tercentenary Exhibition of Contemporary Anglo-Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Gallery (1956)
- Annual (non-Jury) Exhibition, Ben Uri Gallery (1955)
- The London Group (1948)
- Society of Painter-Etchers
Ben Uri collection
Eric Doitch in the Ben Uri collection
Ben Uri archive
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Eric Doitch]
Ben Uri library
Publications related to [Eric Doitch] in the Ben Uri Library