Jupp Dernbach-Mayen was born Appollonia Herman Joseph Dernbach in Mayen, Germany in 1908. He trained in Cologne and later at the Berlin Academy, where he studied under Max Kaus and Hans Orlowski. Learning that he was being monitored by the Gestapo, he fled to London in 1939; after being interned at Huyton camp, near Liverpool, and serving in the Pioneer Corps, he worked with émigré potter Lucie Rie before focusing on large installations, including the fountains built for the high-rise office building, Centre Point, in London.
Artist Jupp Dernbach-Mayen was born Appollonia Herman Joseph Dernbach in Mayen, Germany in 1908. The youngest son of a stonemason, his father encouraged him to learn a trade at a young age, and he began his first apprenticeship to a house painter at the age of 12. His employer noted that Dernbach would constantly sketch skilfully during his free time and paid for him to attend a drawing school in nearby Cologne. On leaving home, Dernbach adopted the name of his hometown, Mayen, thereafter signing much of his work with the monogram JDM. After completing his studies in Cologne, he was awarded a scholarship to study under Max Kaus and Hans Orlowski at the Berlin Academy. Whilst working as a scene painter at the Berlin State Theatre, Dernbach-Mayen began helping Jewish friends flee Berlin until he was informed by a co-worker that he was being monitored by the Gestapo and was advised to leave at once. He immediately packed in his bags and fled to Ibiza, where he worked as a painter and decorator before moving to Denmark and finally to London in 1939, to join his wife, Miette. A flower painting under the name Jupp Dernbach featured in the First Group Exhibition by German, Austrian and Czechoslovak Artists, held at the Wertheim Gallery, London in mid-summer 1939, sponsored by the FGLG (Free German League of Culture, a left-leaning organisation which supported German-speaking refugees in exile).
On arrival in England Dernbach-Mayen was classified as a ‘friendly enemy alien’ and, in 1940, following the government's policy of mass internment, was transferred to a camp at Huyton, outside Liverpool, The camp soon developed a reputation for being a hub of creative activity due to the high number of German artists interned there, including ceramicist Hans Coper, who would become his colleague and lifelong friend. After briefly serving in the Pioneer Corps in New Zealand and suffering a nervous breakdown in 1942, Dernbach-Mayen was discharged and returned to London. As he had no connections in the English art world, he found work coating watch faces with luminous paint until he came into contact with the German-British art collector and gallery owner, William Ohly, who referred him to the Austrian potter Lucie Rie, who was known for employing refugee artists. He began working at her Albion Mews studio in 1946, and it was here that he also reconnected with Coper, who was one of the few employees Rie retained during the war years. From 1941‒1942, the studio had focused largely on the production of ceramic buttons for couture fashion but returned to normal production by the end of the war. While working at Albion Mews, he and Coper built a new, larger kiln for the studio which allowed for increased production. Among the works produced by Dernbach-Mayen at Albion Mews is a stoneware plate made in 1949 depicting lemons and a melon, and now held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Dernbach-Mayen was best known for his experimental techniques and his ability to work with a variety of media and styles, ranging from watercolour and oil paintings to furniture and mosaics. After his mosaics were exhibited in the 1951 nationwide Festival of Britain, he abandoned pottery and left Rie’s studio to focus on his own work, holding a number of exhibitions in London commercial galleries, including Paintings, Architectural Panels, Wire Sculptures by Jupp Dernbach-Mayen, Galerie de Seine, Halkin Street (1959) and Jupp Dernbach-Mayen: Sculpture and Reliefs, Marjorie Parr Galleries (1970). In 1978 his work was featured in the group exhibition, London Artists from Germany, held at Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, London, along with the work of a number of other émigré artists, including Susan Eingzig, Walter Nessler, Herman and Erna Nonnenmacher, and Hans Feibusch (the latter two represented in the Ben Uri Collection). He created mosaics, friezes, and fountains for the Sanderson Hotel in Fitzrovia in 1960 and a sculpture for the Westminster Bank in New Oxford Street in 1962, while his largest commission was a fibreglass and concrete fountain built in 1963 at the base of Centre Point, a high-rise office building on the junction of Tottenham Court Road. The Grade II-listed fountains were removed in 2009 to make way for a Crossrail station between Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, and were finally relocated to Dorset in 2016. Dernbach-Mayen died in 1990. his work is held in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Two sets of photographs reproducing two drawings of the composer Priaulx Rainier by Dernbach-Mayen are held in the Royal Academy of Music Library.