Hans Abarbanell was born into a partly Jewish family in Stettin, Germany in 1909; he settled in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1936, later fleeing to England as a refugee in 1939. In 1940 he was deported and interned as an 'enemy alien' in Hay Camp, New South Wales, Australia, until 1941, afterwards returning to England and working as a window dresser and art restorer, as well as a collector of antiquities.
Sculptor and graphic artist Hans Abarbanell was born on 10 December 1909 in Stettin, Prussia, then part of the German Empire (now Szczecin, Poland). He settled in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) in 1936, later fleeing to England as a refugee on 25 April 1939, one of some 12,000 refugees from Czechoslovakia who took up residency in Britain. Little is known of his early life but he was later described as ‘half Jewish’ on an Artists Refugee Committee list of artists deported and interned in the Commonwealth in 1940–41 (Tate archive). The same document also described him as a newly-married German sculptor and cabinet maker – noting that he was 'a magnificent craftsman and furniture restorer' – with a Czech passport, who had left Germany for 'racial and political' reasons.
In England, Abarbanell participated in the First Group Exhibition of German, Austrian, Czechoslovakian Painters and Sculptors at the Wertheim Gallery in June 1939, where his Torso was praised as 'expressive and sensitive' by the art critic of the Jewish Chronicle (23 June 1939, p. 43). He was also a member of the Free German League of Culture (FGLC), which supported German-speaking refugees in Britain in a number of cultural endeavours (his address in this period was listed as 5 Mall Studios, London NW3). In 1940, following the introduction of internment in June for so-called 'enemy aliens' in Britain, he was rounded up and sent by ship on the infamous 'Dunera' to Australia (while his wife remained in London). He was interned in Hay Camp, New South Wales with many other artists, actors, and writers, several of whom had performed anti-Fascist works on the stage of the German refugee founded Kleine Buhne theatre in London. Together, they produced a satirical revue entitled Erinnerung an Europa (A Reminder of Europe), with Abarbanell designing the stage set. During this period, he was one of 40 artists named in an article by the art critic of the Jewish Chronicle ('Forty Artists Interned', 6 September 1940). In 1941 five of his drawings, each priced at £2 2s, were included in the Exhibition of Sculpture and Drawings jointly organised by the AIA (Artists' International Association) and FGLC.
After the war, Abarbanell returned to England and worked, together with his wife, Edith (née Karczinski, born 1911), as a window dresser for a central London department store (1945–55). His surviving sketches from this time are mostly drawings of mannequins and caricatures of his colleagues; he probably also worked part-time as a picture restorer (Morwenna Blewett, 2019). The Abarbanells also collected antiquities, particularly sculpture from India, and the British Museum purchased several of their collected pieces in 1960. Abarbanell died in a fire at his home in London in early 1997, which also destroyed much of his artwork and collection. In 1986 his work was included in the survey exhibition Kunst im Exil in Grossbritannien at the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst in Berlin.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Hans Abarbanell]
Publications related to [Hans Abarbanell] in the Ben Uri Library