Ben Uri Research Unit

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


Horace Brodzky artist

Horace Ascher Brodzky was born into a Jewish family in Australia in 1886 but spent most of his life and career in London and New York. His work included paintings, drawings and linocuts, of which he was an early pioneer. Although in his early career he was associated with many leading modernist artists working in Britain, including Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Mark Gertler, and members of the Vorticist movement, in later life his reputation declined; it has, however, seen a posthumous rehabilitation.

Born: 1885 Kew, Melbourne, Australia

Died: 1969 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1908

Other name/s: Horace Brodsky


Biography

Horace Ascher Brodzky was born to a Jewish family in Melbourne on 30 January 1885 and attended the Australian National Gallery School. In 1905 he travelled to San Francisco and New York, and then moved to London in 1908, where he studied at the City and Guilds Art School in Kennington. In 1914 his work was selected for inclusion in the groundbreaking so-called 'Jewish Section' of the Whitechapel Art Gallery's important exhibition: Twentieth Century Art: A Review of Modern Movements. From 1914 he was also involved with the progressive New English Art Club (NEAC) and the London Group, gradually developing a loose amalgam of fauve and post-impressionist painting techniques. Brodzky became a close friend of émigré sculptor, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and, following his untimely death fighting in the First World War in 1915, he published the artist's biography.

In the postwar period Brodzky returned to New York where he worked as a painter, printmaker, theatre designer and journalist for eight years, exhibiting with the Temporary Group. In 1923 he returned to London, where he showed regularly, including with Ben Uri from 1935 onwards. Throughout his later life Brodzky continued to paint and work with printmaking, exhibiting with London commercial venues including the Belgrave Gallery, Boundary Gallery and the Mercury Gallery, as well as in survey shows of Jewish artists. In 1946 he published a biography of émigré artist, Jules Pascin, associated with L'Ecole de Paris.

Horace Brodzky died in London, England on 11 February 1969. Posthumously his reputation has seen a rehabilitation, particularly in Australia through the efforts of Henry R. Lew, who has published a number of texts, including in 2023 on Brodzky and Derwent Lees. Lew writes: 'Few people realise that Brodzky was the first Australian artist to produce an abstract work of art; that he was the first man in Great Britain to do linocuts; that he wrote a published magazine article illustrated with coloured linocuts 2 years before Claude Flight, the father of coloured linocuts, did his first coloured linocut and 5 years before Flight joined the Grosvenor school where he would later teach his technique to Australians Dorrit Black, Ethel Spowers and Eveline Syme. Few people realise that Brodzky was the first living Australian artist to have an overseas monograph produced about his work; and the first living Australian artist to have two overseas monographs produced about his work which then occurred in two different countries on two different continents. Few appreciate the role he played in getting artists like Russell Drysdale, Donald Friend, Arthur and David Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, and Fred Williams known in England before they returned to Australia. The fame that Brodzky achieved for them in England enabled them to return home as established overseas stars of Australian art.' (Henry R Lew, correspondence with Ben Uri, 2023).

Brodzky's work is held in UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection, British Museum, Manchester Art Gallery, National Gallery of Scotland, Tate, and Victoria and Albert Museum. Posthumously, his work has featured in The Ben Uri Story: From Art Society to Museum, held at Phillips' Auctioneers, London (2001) and in Mark Gertler: Paintings from the Luke Gertler Bequest and Selected Important UK Collections, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2019).

Related books

  • Henry R. Lew, Australian Genesis and Exodus – the stories of Derwent Lees and Horace Brodzky – their lives, their families and their in-common friends and acquaintances (Melbourne: Henry R Lew, 2023)
  • Frances Carey and Antony Griffiths, Avant-garde British Printmaking 1914-1960 (London: British Museum, 1990)
  • Henry R. Lew, Brodzky (Melbourne: Henry R Lew, 1987)
  • Jewish Artists of Great Britain 1845-1945 (London: Belgrave Gallery Ltd, 1978)
  • Horace Brodzky, 'I Remember', Jewish Quarterly, Vol 12, 1964, p. 22
  • Horace Brodzky, Pascin: with a Preface by James Laver (1946)
  • James Laver, Forty Drawings by Horace Brodzky (London: W Heinemann, 1935)
  • 'Art Notes. Ben Uri's Annual Exhibition', Jewish Chronicle, 24 May 1935, p.
  • S., 'Art Notes. Brodzky's Brilliant Drawings', Jewish Chronicle, 8 November 1935, p. 40
  • Horace Brodzky, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska: 1891–1915 (1933)
  • 'Five Artists', The Times, 31 March 1924, p. 10
  • A Portfolio of Linoleum Cuts by Horace Brodzky (New York: Egmont H Arens, 1920)
  • 'A Jewish Futurist. Chat with Mr. David Bomberg', Jewish Chronicle, 8 May 1914, p. 13

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Allied Artists' Association (member)
  • City and Guilds Art School (student)
  • London Group (member)
  • National Gallery of Victoria School of Art (student) (student)
  • New English Art Club (member)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Mark Gertler: Paintings from the Luke Gertler Bequest and Selected Important UK Collections, Ben Uri Gallery, Boundary Road, London (2019)
  • The Ben Uri Story: From Art Society to Museum, Phillips, London (2001)
  • Jewish Artists The Ben Uri Collection, Ben Uri Gallery (1994)
  • Prints and Drawings from the Permanent Collection, Ben Uri Gallery, Dean Street, London (1989)
  • Solo exhibition, Boundary Gallery, London (1989)
  • Selected Works from the Permanent Collection, Ben Uri Gallery (1983)
  • Jewish Artists of Great Britain (1845–1945), Belgrave Gallery, London and Cartwright Hall Art Gallery and Museum, Bradford (1978)
  • Selections from the Permanent Collection: Watercolours, Drawings, Graphics, Ben Uri Gallery, Dean Street, London (1977)
  • Solo exhibition, Fieldborne Gallery, London (1977)
  • Paintings from the Ben Uri Art Gallery, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth (1970)
  • Solo exhibition, Mercury Gallery, London (1966)
  • Horace Brodzky: Retrospective Exhibition, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1965)
  • Australian Artists' Association, Imperial Institute Gallery (1957)
  • Tercentenary Exhibition of Contemporary Anglo-Jewish Artists,Ben Uri Gallery (1956)
  • Summer Exhibition of Modern Paintings and Drawings, Beaux Arts Gallery (1952)
  • Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Jewish Painters and Sculptors, Ben Uri Gallery (1950)
  • Drawings by Horace Brodzky, Foyle Art Gallery, London (1935)
  • Annual Exhibition of Works by Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Jewish Art Gallery, Woburn House, London (1935)
  • First Exhibition of Linocuts, Redfern Gallery, London (1929)
  • London Group (1926)
  • Five Artists, Alpine Club Gallery, London (1924)
  • Twentieth Century Art: A Review of Modern Movements, Whitechapel Gallery (1914)
  Horace Brodzky
   
Ben Uri collection

Horace Brodzky in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Horace Brodzky]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Horace Brodzky] in the Ben Uri Library