Erich Kahn was born into a Jewish family in Stuttgart, Germany in 1904 and studied at the Stuttgart Art Academy and the Paris atelier of Fernand Léger. Following the rise of Nazism and the introduction of anti-Semitic legislation, he was held in Welzheim concentration camp, fleeing to England upon his release in 1939. He was subsequently interned in 1940 as an 'enemy alien' at Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man, largely neglected by the British art establishment after his release, but exhibiting within a Jewish and an émigré context.
Graphic artist and painter Erich Kahn was born into a Jewish family in Stuttgart, Germany on 25 August 1904. He studied at the Stuttgart Art Academy (1922–1925) under Professor Schneidler and was strongly influenced by the expressionist aesthetic of the local Üecht-Gruppe (founded in 1919 by German painter Willi Baumeister). In 1926 Kahn travelled to Paris to study at the atelier of French painter Fernand Léger, afterwards returning to Germany, where his work was included in the Jewish Museum Berlin's exhibition, Reichsausstellung Jüdischer Künstler (April–June 1936). Following Hitler's accession to the German Chancellorship in 1933, the introduction of anti-Semitic legislation and the Kristallnacht Jewish pogroms in November 1938, Kahn was briefly imprisoned in Welzheim concentration camp, and upon release in 1939, fled to England.
Initially, Kahn stayed in Golders Green, north London, with British relatives, until in June 1941, he was interned as a so-called 'enemy alien' on the Isle of Man, at Hutchinson Camp - known as the 'artists' camp' because of the high concentration of artist internees, who included Kurt Schwitters, Siegfried Charoux, Georg Ehrlich, Paul Hamann, Hermann Fechenbach, and Hellmuth Weissenborn, as well as art historian, Klaus Hinrichsen. The latter recalled Kahn at their first encounter on the boat transporting internees from Liverpool to the island as 'a shy man with a strong aversion to the 'bourgeois' values which had been his family background' (Behr and Malet 2005, p. 24). Kahn's sketches of this journey revealed dejected groups huddled together like 'flotsam tossed upon the sea' (Behr et al, p. 23). Hinrichsen noted further how Kahn, '[h]unted by nightmares [...], drew and painted visions of burning cities and fugitives, running and crouching in despair, thereby lifting the specific experience of emigration and persecution into an indictment of man's inhumanity' (cited Cesarani and Kushner 1993, pp. 190-191). In camp Kahn contributed prolifically to the internees' broadsheet The Camp, designing vignettes, lettering, and layouts, illustrating essays, and providing full-page drawings depicting camp life, reproduced using a stencilling technique he invented, using rasps and household utensils. The stencilled drawing, Lecture on the Lawn II (Imperial War Museum), represents a group of men sitting on the grass, gathered for a talk by an interned academic, as part of the camp's informal 'university'; it was dedicated to Weissenborn on his release on Boxing Day 1940, probably as a farewell present. Kahn also exhibited at the camp's Second Art Exhibition, held on 19 November 1940.
After release in spring 1941, Kahn returned to London; although psychologically troubled, he remained active among the former internee network, regularly attending life drawing sessions at Paul Hamann’s Clifton Hill studio in St John’s Wood, where he executed numerous drawings, alongside Hugo Dachinger and Walter Nessler. Although largely neglected by the British art establishment, he was bolstered by support from eminent Czechoslovak émigré art historian, Professor J. P. Hodin, and in 1941 and 1942 exhibited at the prestigious Leger Galleries in London. Kahn was also associated with the Hampstead Artists Council, participated in Ben Uri Gallery exhibitions of works by Jewish artists from January 1944 into the 1960s, and was a member of Ben Uri's Studio Group in the early 1950s. He exhibited with Ceri Richards at the Redfern Gallery, London in 1956 but his portraits and landscapes, painted in a loose, expressionistic style, were predominantly shown within an émigré context in group shows at Polish émigrée Halima Nalecz's Drian Gallery in London in 1958 and 1960, and at German émigrée Annely Juda’s Molton Gallery in London in 1961. In January 1962 a reviewer in AJR Information observed that Kahn's 'style and working method make it difficult for the critic to pigeon-hole him, for he is neither completely abstract nor completely figurative […] his extraordinary temperament causes colouristic explosions, so that his canvases mirror in exuberant colours the overflowing passions of this artist, who seems neither willing nor capable of controlling himself. [...] Some of his works are like painted poems or musical compositions'. The oil painting, The Seven Sisters, (1954, Tate), depicting the Sussex Coast, shows a dissolution of form, almost to the point of abstraction, characteristic of his style, which can also be seen in his abstract Composition (Ben Uri Collection); he also made etchings, linocuts and wood engravings.
Eric Kahn died in London, England on 15 February 1979. A decade later, gallerist John Denham (a regular supporter of émigré artists) held a posthumous retrospective, Erich Kahn 1904 Stuttgart – 1980 London, in 1989. Kahn's work has also been included in group surveys under the auspices of Ben Uri Gallery including: Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain c. 1933–45 (Ben Uri Gallery, 2009–10) and Finchleystrasse: German Artists in Exile in Great Britain and Beyond 1933–45 (curated by Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson of Ben Uri at the Germany Embassy, London, 2018). Kahn's work is held in UK public collections including the British Museum and Tate. The largest collection of his work is at the Berardo Collection in Lisbon, Portugal, which held a major retrospective in 2005.
Erich Kahn in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Erich Kahn]