Ben Uri Research Unit

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


Henryk Gotlib artist

Henryk Gotlib was born into a Jewish family in Cracow, Austria-Hungary (now Poland) in 1890. He studied art in Cracow and Vienna, and exhibited and travelled widely in Europe, before arriving in England in 1938. Unable to return to Poland with the outbreak of war, and with a British wife, Gotlib swiftly established himself in the British art world, teaching, exhibiting (including with The London Group) and writing about art; however, as a defiantly figurative artist, his work was largely neglected after the rise in popularity of abstract expressionism in the 1950s.

Born: 1890 Cracow, Austria-Hungary (now Poland)

Died: 1966 South Godstone, Surrey, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1939


Biography

Painter and teacher Henryk Gotlib was born into a Jewish family in Cracow, Austria-Hungary (now Poland) on 1 October 1890, originally with the surname Gotlieb. He studied at the Cracow Academy of Art from 1908–10 and Law at the Jagiellonian University, before continuing art studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna (1911–13); he was then conscripted into the Austrian army during the First World War. Following his first solo exhibition in Warsaw around 1918, Gotlib developed an aesthetic affinity with various Polish avant-garde groups, including the Formists, placing colour and form at the centre of his art. He was also influenced by Rembrandt and European expressionism.

In Paris in the 1920s, Gotlib wrote and painted, participating in various Salons, followed by time in Brittany in 1929, where he refined his mature vision (see 'In the Land of My Own Vision', Studio International, May 1970, p. 194). After a brief return to Poland and travels in Italy, Greece and Spain, Gotlib arrived in London in April 1938, where he met his future wife, Janet, whom he married two months later in Paris. Returning to England on a short visit in June 1939 – Gotlib briefly painted in Cornwall – the couple found themselves trapped by the outbreak of war. During the war Gotlib swiftly established himself in the British art world: In 1941 he exhibited in the vast Exhibition of Works by Our Allies, held under the auspices of the British Council at the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh. He also showed his monumental canvas Warsaw, September 1939, memorialising his invaded homeland, as a highlight in the Exhibition of Contemporary Continental Art at J. Leger & Son, London; more than 20 émigrés exhibited, and former internee, art historian Klaus Hinrichsen, wrote the foreword, praising artists who 'rather exiled themselves from their home countries than be humiliated to accepting the ideas of "Art" forced upon them by the dictators'. A passionate and perceptive writer on art, Gotlib wrote Travels of a Painter (1939, published in Polish in 1947) and Polish Painting (1942). In the same year, he showed in the Exhibition of Works of Polish and Czechoslovak Artists at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. One of the first 'foreign' members of The London Group, Gotlib showed Mickiewicz Returns to Cracow in their Fifth War-time Exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1943, the subject proudly affirming Polish national identity while its government was exiled in Britain (and offered at a staggering £1,050). The painting was, in fact, the left-wing of Gotlib's important Polish War Triptych, never exhibited in its complete form in Britain; the right-wing, Stabat Mater, was shown with The London Group in 1944, and the whole triptych given to the National Museum, Warsaw in 1948. The same year Gotlib served on The London Group’s Working Committee with David Bomberg, Duncan Grant, Victor Pasmore and Claude Rogers. During the war, Gotlib also taught at the Polish School of Art, established in exile in London, and at Hampstead School of Art. Postwar, the German refugee and Hampstead local, Klaus Meyer (1918–2002), studied with Gotlib.

Between 1945 and 1949, Gotlib held three solo exhibitions at Roland Browse and Delbanco, writing to his dealer, fellow émigré, Henry Roland in 1947: 'Bonnard paints atmosphere; I paint the thing itself'. In 1949 Gotlib was invited to Poland to teach at the Academy in Cracow; the move was unsuccessful and he returned to England, settling in South Godstone, Surrey. As a figurative artist, inspired by landscapes, animals, and people, he was largely neglected after the rise in popularity of abstract expressionism in the 1950s. His final years, spent living in relative isolation in the countryside, were shadowed by depression, reflected in more sombre canvases from this period. Of these works, fellow Pole, painter Josef Herman wrote: 'He used now colours for their emotive force, rather than for their sensual glitter [...] The actual vision which stimulated the painting came from inside himself like a helpless groan' (catalogue, Henryk Gotlib Paintings, 1972). At this time, much support for Gotlib came from émigré dealers, such as Andras Kalman of Crane Kalman, London, who hosted solo shows in 1958, 1961 and 1963. In 1964, Gotlib showed in Fifty years of British Art at the Tate Gallery, celebrating the half-century of The London Group. Henryk Gotlib died in South Godstone on 30 December 1966. Posthumous retrospectives included the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (1970) and Homage to Henrik Gotlib, Leicestershire Museums and Art Galleries (1983). In 2017, his self-portrait featured in Emigrés: Twentieth Century Self-Portraits by Artists from Abroad at the National Portrait Gallery, London. His work is in UK collections including the Arts Council, Ben Uri Collection, National Portrait Gallery, Ruth Borchard Collection and Tate.

Related books

  • Rachel Dickson, ed., From Adler to Zulawski: A Century of Polish Artists in Britain (London: Ben Uri Research Unit, 2020)
  • Douglas Hall, Art in Exile: Polish Painters in Post-War Britain (Bristol: Sansom, 2008)
  • Shulamith Behr and Marian Malet eds., Arts in Exile in Britain 1933–1945: Politics and Cultural Identity (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005)
  • Philip Vann, Face to Face: British Self Portraits in the Twentieth Century (Bristol: Sansom, 2004)
  • Agi Katz, Henryk Gotlib 1890–1966: A European Master (London: Boundary Gallery, 1988)
  • Josef Herman, Homage to Henryk Gotlib (Milton Keynes: Leinster Fine Art, 1983)
  • Henryk Gotlib Paintings, exhib. cat. (University of Keele & Hull, 1972)
  • Henryk Gotlib, 'In the Land of My Own Vision', Studio International, May 1970, p. 194
  • Recent Paintings by Henryk Gotlib (London: Crane Kalman Gallery, 1961)
  • Henryk Gotlib, Polish Painting (London: Minerva, 1942)

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Hampstead School of Art (teacher)
  • Polish School of Art (in London) (teacher)
  • The London Group (member)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Art-Exit 1939: A Very Different Europe, Ben Uri Gallery at 12 Star Gallery, Europe House (2019)
  • Highlights and New Acquisitions, Ben Uri Gallery (2018)
  • Emigres: Twentieth Century Self-portraits by Artists from Abroad, National Portrait Gallery, London (2017)
  • Art Out of the Bloodlands: A Century of Polish Artists in Britain, Ben Uri Gallery & Museum (2017)
  • Henryk Gotlib 1890 – 1966, Embassy of the Republic of Poland, London (2004)
  • Henryk Gotlib – A European Master, Boundary Gallery (1988)
  • Homage to Henryk Gotlib, Leicestershire Museums and Art Galleries (1983)
  • Henryk Gotlib, University of Surrey (1982)
  • Henryk Gotlib, National Museum, Warsaw (1980)
  • Henryk Gotlib, Campbell & Franks Ltd., London (1977)
  • Gotlib, Buxton Mill Galleries, Norwich (1974)
  • Henryk Gotlib: Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings, Ashgate Gallery, Farnham (1974)
  • Selected Works by Henryk Gotlib, Collins Art Centre, Strathclyde University (1973)
  • Henryk Gotlib – Paintings, Universities of Keele and Hull (1972)
  • An Exhibition of the Later Paintings of Henryk Gotlib, University College, Cardiff (1972)
  • Henryk Gotlib (1890–1966), Morley Gallery, London (1971)
  • Henryk Gotlib – Paintings & Drawings, Southampton Art Gallery (1970)
  • Henryk Gotlib, Arts Council at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (1970)
  • Fifty Years of British Art, Tate (1964)
  • Paintings by Henryk Gotlib, Crane Kalman Gallery, London (1958)
  • Seasons, Contemporary Art Society at The Tate, London (1956)
  • Recent Paintings of Henryk Gotlib, O'Hana Gallery, London (1953)
  • Paintings and Sculpture by Henryk Gotlib, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London (1949)
  • Recent Paintings by Henryk Gotlib, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London (1947)
  • School of London, Victor Waddington Galleries, Dublin (1947)
  • Paintings by Henryk Gotlib, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London (1945)
  • Exhibition of Works of Polish and Czechoslovak Artists, Ashmolean Museum (1942)
  • Allied Artists, National Gallery of Scotland (1941)
  • Henryk Gotlib, Van Gogh Gallery, Amsterdam (1922)
  • Henryk Gotlib, Society of Polish Artists, Warsaw (1918)
  Henryk Gotlib
   
Ben Uri collection

Henryk Gotlib in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Henryk Gotlib]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Henryk Gotlib] in the Ben Uri Library