Fermin Rocker was born to a German Catholic anarchist father, Rudolf Rocker, and a Jewish Ukrainian-Russian, Yiddish-speaking anarchist and feminist activist mother, Milly Witkop, in Stepney, East London, in 1907. Rocker attended the School of Arts and Crafts in Berlin, Germany, initially training as a lithographer, and worked in New York, USA before returning to the UK in later life, and settling in London, where he continued as a painter and book illustrator.
Painter and book illustrator, Fermin Rocker was born in Stepney, East London, to a German Catholic anarchist father, Rudolf Rocker, and a Jewish Ukrainian-Russian, Yiddish-speaking anarchist and feminist activist mother, Milly Witkop, in 1907. He was named after the Spanish anarchist and mayor of Cádiz, Fermín Salvochea. In Paris, Rudolf was influenced by syndicalist and Jewish anarchist ideologies. He relocated to London in 1895, becoming a prominent figure in the local Yiddish-language anarchist scene, editing the affiliated periodical, Arbeter Fraynd (The Workers’ Friend). Fleeing anti-Jewish pogroms in her homeland, Milly settled in London, where she met and became Rudolf's common-law wife. In his youth, the young Rocker mixed with renowned anarchists such as Errico Malatesta and Peter Kropotkin, often accompanying his father to their meetings. During this time, he was mentored in drawing by his half-brother. Rocker’s early works frequently featured his father. However, his own political stance remains unclear; as Andrew Whitehead has noted: ‘[…] Fermin was impatient of its [anarchism’s] feuds, and critical of the left’s reluctance to engage with the modern world and to acknowledge that capitalism has enhanced lives and living standards,’ (Whitehead, 2004). Nonetheless, as a boy, Rocker often joined his father at the Jubilee Street Club, a hub for supporters of East End Jewish radicalism, where he would regularly draw and sketch.
During the First World War, Rocker’s parents were interned as enemy aliens. Afterwards, the family briefly stayed in the Netherlands before settling in Germany. There, Rocker studied at the Realschule and the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in Berlin, training initially as a lithographer and moving in the city's artistic circles. His early oeuvre encompassed sketches, watercolours, and graphic work. In 1929, the family relocated to New York, USA, where Rocker worked as an illustrator and commercial artist, eventually focusing on etching, lithographs, painting, and book illustrations, and working with the American magazine, Survey Graphic. He also illustrated for the Oxford University Press during this time, producing paintings on the side. Rocker’s realist style primarily consisted of landscapes with warm hues and oil paintings capturing daily life — from intimate moments to street scenes, individuals on public transport, and theatre audiences. However, his paintings did not exhibit any political themes. Throughout his life, he also painted portraits of friends and neighbours; notably, his portrait of Yiddishist, Joseph Leftwich provided the cover image for the celebratory volume Joseph Leftwich at Eighty-Five A Collective Evaluation, published in 1978. Rocker met his wife, Ruth Robins, a dentist from California, while n the USA.
The couple returned to England in the early 1970s, settling in Tufnell Park, north London; Ruth arrived in 1970, followed by her husband two years later. Back in the UK, Rocker's artistic style underwent an evolution, and although he continued to showcase daily urban life, he began to produce still lifes and paintings with political subjects, while his colour palette became moodier. At 65, Rocker shifted his focus entirely to painting. In 1998, to mark his 90th birthday, he released his memoir, The East End Years, A Stepney Childhood. It recounts his experiences from childhood in East London as the son of anarchist immigrants to his 1972 return after his stint in New York. The memoir paints a vivid picture of a family escaping persecution in Eastern Europe and Germany, highlighting the profound impact of Jewish immigrants on London’s East End culture. Whitehead claims that despite Rocker’s tepid commitment to anarchism, he was ‘one of the last links with the heroic era of European and American anarchism,’ (Whitehead, 2004).
Throughout his artistic journey, Rocker illustrated numerous publications, in addition to his memoir. Some of his works include: Bertie and May (1971), The Upstairs Room (1972), Gran at Coalgate (1974), The Gates of Paradise (1974), Hijacked! (1977), Milly Witkop-Rocker (1981), and Footprints in the Jungle and Other Stories (1992), among others. He held solo exhibitions in the USA in 1944 and 1961, displaying his works at the Whitney Art Gallery and the Chicago Institute of Art. In the last two decades of his life, he held a number of solo exhibitions. Fermin Rocker died in London, England, on 18 October 2004. The same year a retrospective of his work was held at the Chambers Gallery, London followed by another in 2005–6. In 2011 Ben Uri featured his work in the exhibition, Summer in the City: Contemporary Responses. In the UK public domain his work is held by the Ben Uri Collection and Tower Hamlets Local History Library, while the British Library holds books he illustrated and an extensive interview with Whitehead.
Fermin Rocker in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Fermin Rocker ]
Publications related to [Fermin Rocker ] in the Ben Uri Library