Israel 'Henry' Leibo was born into a Jewish family in Tallinn, Russian Empire (now Estonia) in 1912, leaving for Berlin in 1929, where he studied with Max Liebermann. After travelling extensively throughout Europe he arrived in England in 1939, exhibiting at the Lefevre Gallery, London with Moise Kisling in the same year. He exhibited at Dr Immanuel Bierer's Harley Street premises in 1976 and contributed work to a number of picture fairs at Ben Uri Gallery between 1978 and 1982.
Painter Israel 'Henry' Leibo was born into a Jewish family in Tallinn, Russian Empire (now Estonia) in 1912, where his father ran a jewellery shop. He started painting at the age of eight. His brother Yehuda, known as Jules (1904–1958), eight years his senior, studied sculpture under Dora Gordine in Tallin and at the Reimann School of Art and Design in Berlin, before abandoning his artistic career for medicine, although he continued to sculpt and to exhibit in Estonia. Israel also began training as a doctor but followed the reverse course to his brother and in 1929, at the age of 18, abandoned medicine for painting, leaving Estonia for Germany, where he studied under Max Liebermann in Berlin. Consequently, there is sometimes confusion between the two brother's artistic careers. In 1932 Israel travelled to Paris, exhibiting at the Petit Palais, making contacts among the Russian-Jewish artists of the École de Paris, including Soutine, Chagall, Kisling, Rybak, and Mané-Katz, and particularly Marc Chagall, who became a mentor under whose influence Leibo made paintings in a Cubist manner. In 1935 he exhibited in Riga, Latvia and Copenhagen, Denmark (where his portrait of the Danish King Christian is said to have earned him a lifetime pension), and in 1937, at the invitation of the Belgian Colonial Office, he travelled extensively in the Congo, producing a body of around 80 works.
In 1939 Leibo travelled to England with Moise Kisling, with whom he had been offered a joint exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery; they arrived on the day the Second World War broke out and the exhibition does not seem to have been realised. As a citizen of a neutral country, Leibo received a permit to remain and settled in Bloomsbury, marrying an English woman. Little is known of his later career as an artist, although his painting, Sunflowers was apparently exhibited at the Tate sometime during Sir John Rothenstein's tenure as Director (1938–64); and he is believed to have also exhibited in Amsterdam. In 1975 Leibo advertised a series of 24 original paintings, illustrating the biblical text of the Song of Solomon, as a painter of the 'School of Chagall'. The following year he exhibited in Harley Street at the premises of Dr Immanuel Bierer, who later presented his painting Landscape with Plough to Ben Uri Gallery and Museum. He also contributed work to a number of picture fairs at Ben Uri Gallery between 1978 and 1982. Israel Leibo died in London, England in 1987.
Israel Leibo in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Israel Leibo]
Publications related to [Israel Leibo] in the Ben Uri Library