Josef Karpf was born into a Jewish family in Jaslo, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Poland) in 1900 and studied law in Vienna where he also attended art school. In 1947, posted to the Polish embassy in London, he moved to England with his wife, Polish concert pianist Natalia Weissman (later Natalia Karp). Although he earned a living through his printing business run in partnership with fellow émigré, Rafael Scharf, Karpf nevertheless continued to create art throughout his life in Britain.
Businessman, painter and sculptor, Josef Karpf was born in Jaslo, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Poland) on 21 March 1900. Despite his early passion for art, studying at night school in Vienna, Karpf graduated in economics after the early death of his father, while also continuing his artistic pursuits. Following the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, he was sent to labour camps in Siberia, but survived, thanks to his draughtsmanship, which duly impressed his captors. After the war, Karpf met Natalia Weissman, a fellow Pole and an acclaimed concert pianist. Weissman had survived Płaszów concentration camp (along with her sister, Helena) after Amon Goeth, the notorious commandant, ordered her to play for his birthday. She was subsequently deported to Auschwitz with Helena, where she also survived. Karpf and Weissman married in 1946, moving to England the following year, when Karpf was posted to the Polish embassy in London. In 1947 he also returned to his homeland to discover that 120 members of his family had perished in the Holocaust.
In England, after receiving political asylum, Karpf established a silkscreen printing business, Tanagra, in Notting Hill, west London, with Arthur Morgan and Rafael (Felek) Scharf (one of the founders of the Institute of Polish-Jewish Studies in Oxford and the scholarly journal Jewish Quarterly). Although Karpf had to earn a living through his printing business, he nevertheless continued to make art throughout his life in Britain. During the 1970s, he created his sculpture Auschwitz (private collection), a shapeless mass of tangled bodies without discernible individual features. The sculpture was included in the Ben Uri exhibition Art Out of the Bloodlands: A Century of Polish Artists in Britain (2017). With Joel Cang, former foreign editor of the Jewish Chronicle newspaper, Karp also co-founded the Association of Polish Jews in Great Britain, serving as its secretary for many years.
Josef Karpf died in London, England on 1 December 1993. In the public realm, Ben Uri collection holds Still Life with Skull, a powerful painted memento mori in which the artist acknowledged both the personal trauma suffered by his wife and the wider tragic fate of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. His daughter, Anne Karpf, writer and sociologist, is Professor of Life Writing and Culture at London Metropolitan University and author of The War After: Living with the Holocaust (1996) which documents her parents' life as Holocaust survivors and her own struggle as a second generation survivor.
Josef Karpf in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Josef Karpf]
Publications related to [Josef Karpf] in the Ben Uri Library