Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Fred Uhlman artist

Fred (Manfred) Uhlman, was born into a Jewish family in Stuttgart, Germany in 1901 and trained as a lawyer. He became a self-taught painter while living in Paris, where he fled following the Nazis rise to power in Germany in 1933, and where he gained a reputation as a ‘naïve’ artist. In 1938 he moved to England with his aristocratic wife, Diana Croft, and their Hampstead home became a centre of émigré activity. Following internment on the Isle of Man during 1940, Uhlman published a book of drawings in 1946; he also exhibited regularly and later published his autobiography in 1960 and an enduringly popular novel in 1977.

Born: 1901 Stuttgart, Germany

Died: 1985 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1936

Other name/s: Manfred Uhlmann


Biography

Fred (Manfred) Uhlman was born into a comfortable, middle-class Jewish family in Stuttgart, Germany on 19 January 1901. He attended the local Eberhard-Ludwig Gymnasium, then studied at the Universities of Freiburg, Munich and Tübingen, graduating in 1923 with a doctorate in Civil and Canon Law. In 1927 he joined the Social Democrat Party. Following the Nazi party's election to power in March 1933, Uhlman moved frequently, armed with a gun, before fleeing to Paris (his parents, who remained behind subsequently perished in Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943 and his sister Erna committed suicide en route to Auschwitz in 1944). Unable to work as a lawyer in the French capital, Uhlman began painting, encouraged by his cousin, Paul Elsas, and the German émigré art historian, Paul Westheim. Soon celebrated as a ‘naïve’ artist for his ‘pictorial fantasies’ and ‘poetic’, ‘childlike vision’, Uhlman had his first solo exhibition at Galerie le Niveau in 1936. Invited by an artist friend, Uhlman spent April to September in the Spanish fishing village of Tossa del Mar, where he met his future wife, Diana (daughter of Conservative politician and aristocrat, Lord Henry Page Croft), but with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, he immigrated to Britain, penniless and barely able to say more than ‘ba ba black sheep’ (Fred Uhlman, The Making of an Englishman, 1960).

In 1938 the Uhlmans settled at 47 Downshire Hill in Hampstead, northwest London, where they co-founded the Artists’ Refugee Committee (ARC), assisting the flight of many artists from Czechoslovakia in the wake of the Munich Agreement, and the Free German League of Culture (FGLC): ‘a German, anti-Nazi, anti-Fascist, non-party, refugee organisation’, designed 'to preserve and advance Free German culture' in the UK. In July of the same year, Uhlman held a solo show at the Zwemmer Gallery, London (established by fellow emigre, Anton Zwemmer), coinciding with his participation, as an artist 'now working in this country', in the Exhibition of Twentieth Century German Art, intended as a riposte to the Nazi 'Degenerate Art' exhibition, held at the New Burlington Galleries in London's West End.

On 25th June 1940, as part of the classification and internment of so-called 'enemy aliens', Uhlman was arrested and initially held in a makeshift camp in Ascot, before being transferred to Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man which, by this time, housed around 1200 internees, most of whom were Jewish refugees and many of whom were artists, academics and musicians. Over the next six months, Uhlman produced more than 150 drawings in charcoal, black and brown ink, which he later divided into three categories, ‘topographical’, ‘fantasy’ and ‘attack on the church’. He considered these drawings to be ‘the best thing I’ve done during my life’, expressing not only ‘the indefinable anguish of captivity’, but also his horror of events unfolding in Europe and his belief in the culpability of the Church in the spread of anti-Semitism in Germany. In 1946 Jonathan Cape published a selection of Uhlman's drawings under the title Captivity. The drawings included images of his baby daughter, Caroline, born during his internment and whom he had not yet seen.

Postwar Uhlman became well known as an 'Anglo-German Welshman' (Graham Samuel, The Western Mail, 11th March 1968) and was elected to the Royal Cambrian Academy in Wales. His engagement with the Welsh landscape began during the war, with family holidays to Portmeirion, a village designed and conceived by architect and fellow Hampstead resident, Clough Williams-Ellis, who wrote the text for Uhlman's 1946 publication An Artist in North Wales and later transformed an old cowshed into a small house for the Uhlmans. Over the next three decades Uhlman's north Wales landscapes, alternately fiery and brooding, but always meticulous, evoked his feeling for ‘the loneliness and overwhelming grandeur of the country’, melding sketches made on site with his own impressions and an often exaggerated palette to create mysterious, otherworldly paintings.

The last large scale exhibition of Uhlman’s work held during his lifetime took place at Leighton House Museum in Holland Park in 1968. Two years later he had an operation to reattach his retina and in 1976 ceased painting altogether, recalling this moment as: ‘one of the saddest [...] in my life’ (Fred Uhlman, The Making of an Englishman, 1960). In 1960 Uhlman published his autobiography, The Making of an Englishman, the final three chapters of which concern his first experiences in England, followed in 1971 by his enduringly popular, semi-autobiographical novella, Reunion. Adapted for film by Harold Pinter in 1989 and for stage by Ronan Wilmot in 2010, Reunion tells the story of an impossible friendship between the narrator, Hans Schwarz, son of a Jewish doctor, and Konradin von Hohenfels, a young aristocrat, during the rise of the Nazi regime in Stuttgart. The Uhlmans were also enthusiastic collectors of African sculpture and in 1984 donated their 72 piece collection to Hatton Gallery, Newcastle.

Fred Uhlman died on 11 April 1985 in London, England. Posthumously, his work featured in Art in Exile in Great Britain 1933-45, held at the Camden Arts Centre as a condensed version of an earlier survey show in West Berlin. In 2018 ‘The Making of an Englishman’: Fred Uhlman A Retrospective was presented at Burgh House & Hampstead Museum. Uhlman's work is held in a number of UK public collections, including the Ben Uri Collection, British Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum, Government Art Collection, Imperial War Museum and the V&A.

Related books

  • Monica Bohm-Duchen ed., Insiders Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe and their Contribution to British Visual Culture (2019)
  • Nicola Baird ed., Fred Uhlman (London: Burgh House & Hampstead Museum, 2018)
  • David Redfern, The London Group: a history 1913-2013 (London:The London Group, 2013)
  • Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson eds., Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain, c. 1933-45 (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2009)
  • Julia Winckler, Charmian Brinson, Anna Müller-Härlin, His Majesty's Loyal Internee: Fred Uhlman in Captivity (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2009)
  • Jutta Vinzent, List of Refugee Artists (Painters, Sculptors, and Graphic Artists) From Nazi Germany in Britain (1933-1945), Identity and Image: Refugee Artists from Nazi Germany in Britain (1933-1945) (Kromsdorf/Weimar: VDG Verlag, 2006) pp.249-298
  • Shulamith Behr and Marian Malet eds., Arts in Exile in Britain 1933-1945: Politics and Cultural Identity (London: Rodopi, 2005)
  • Jutta Vinzent and Jennifer Powell, Art and Migration: Art Works by Refugee Artists from Nazi Germany in Britain (George Bell Institute, 2005)
  • Art in Exile in Great Britain 1933-45 (exh. cat.), Camden Arts Centre, London (1986)
  • Fred Uhlman, Beneath the Lightning and the Moon (London: Duckworth, 1984)
  • John Milner, The Fred and Diana Uhlman collection of African sculpture (Newcastle: Hatton Gallery, 1976)
  • Frank Whitford, Fred Uhlman: a profile, Studio International, 189 (London, 1975), pp. 155–6
  • Jeannette Jackson ed., Hampstead in the Thirties: A Committed Decade (London: Camden Arts Centre, 1975)
  • Fred Uhlman, Reunion (London: Adam Books, 1971)
  • Fred Uhlman, The making of an Englishman (London: Gollancz, 1960)
  • Geoffrey Grigson, The Scilly Isles (London: Paul Elek, 1948)
  • Fred Uhlman, Captivity (London: Jonathan Cape, 1946)
  • Clough Williams-Ellis, An Artist in North Wales (London: Paul Elek, 1946)
  • Jules Renard, Carrots (London: Grey Walls Press, 1946)

Public collections

Related organisations

  • AIA (member)
  • Artists' Refugee Committee (member)
  • Free German League of Culture (co-founder)
  • Hampstead Artists Council (member)
  • Royal Cambrian Academy (member)
  • Royal Society of British Artists (member)
  • The London Group (member)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • The Making of an Englishman: Fred Uhlman, a Retrospective, Burgh House & Hampstead Museum, London (touring to Hatton Gallery, Newcastle) (2018)
  • Forced Journeys, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London and touring (2009-10)
  • The Ben Uri Story: From Art Society to Museum, Phillips Auctioneers, London (2001)
  • Art in Exile in Great Britain 1933-45, Camden Arts Centre, London (1986)
  • Fred Uhlman, Hereford City Art Gallery, Herefordshire (1981)
  • Fred Uhlman, Trafford Gallery (1975)
  • Fred Uhlman, Hampstead Artists' Council, Camden Arts Centre, London (1973)
  • Fred Uhlman, Central Hall, Aberystwyth, Wales (1972)
  • Fred Uhlman, New Grafton Gallery, London (1970)
  • Fred Uhlman: Selected Works from the Thirties to the Sixties, Leighton House Museum, London (1968)
  • Fred Uhlman, Roland Browse and Delbanco, London (1967)
  • Fred Uhlman, City Art Gallery, Plymouth, Devon (1966)
  • Jubilee Exhibition: Fifty Years of British Art- 1914-1964, London Group, Tate Gallery, London (1964)
  • Fred Uhlman Retrospective, Powys Hall, Bangor, Wales (1960)
  • Fred Uhlman, King Street Gallery, London (1960)
  • Fred Uhlman, Howard Roberts Gallery (1960)
  • Fred Uhlman, Trafford Gallery (1959)
  • Fred Uhlman, Zwemmer Gallery, London (1956)
  • Jewish Artists in England, Whitechapel Gallery, London (1956)
  • AIA Travelling Exhibition (1954)
  • Fred Uhlman, Redfern Gallery, London (1953)
  • Paintings and Drawings: The Coronation of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Ministry of Works (1953)
  • Festival of Britain: Anglo-Jewish Exhibition 1851-1951, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1951)
  • Landscape Painting by Contemporary Artists, Arts Council (1950)
  • Fred Uhlman and New Paintings by L.S. Lowry, Christopher Wood, Ivon Hitchens, William Nicholson, Lefevre Gallery, London (1947)
  • Autumn Exhibition of Paintings, Sculptures and Drawings by Contemporary Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1945)
  • Fred Uhlman, Henry Moore, Matthew Smith, Berkeley Galleries, London (1944)
  • Mid European Art Exhibition, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, Leicestershire (1944)
  • AIA Members' Exhibition, R.B.A. Galleries, London (1944)
  • Artists Aid Jewry, Whitechapel Gallery, London (1943)
  • London Group, Royal Academy of Arts, London (1943)
  • Free German League of Culture, London (1942)
  • Fred Uhlman, Leicester Galleries, London (1942)
  • Living Art in England, London Gallery, London (1939)
  • FDKB, Wertheim Gallery, London (1939)
  • Fred Uhlman, Zwemmer Gallery, London (1938)
  • Exhibition of Twentieth Century German Art, New Burlington Galleries, London (1938)
  • Special Paintings by Ivon Hitchens, Christopher Wood, Victor Pasmore, Fred Uhlman and Others, The Storran Gallery, London (1937)
  • Fred Uhlman, Galerie Le Niveau, Paris, France (1936)
  Fred Uhlman
   
Ben Uri collection

Fred Uhlman in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Fred Uhlman]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Fred Uhlman] in the Ben Uri Library