Lazar Berson was born into a Jewish family in the village of Skopichky, Russia (now Skapiškis, Lithuania) in 1882, studying painting in St Petersburg and at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Heavily influenced by traditional Russian folk art, and Jewish motifs, as well as his modernist peers living at La Ruche, Paris, he sought to develop a specifically 'Jewish' art. Following the outbreak of the First World War, Berson moved to London, founding 'The Jewish-National Decorative Art Association (London) Ben Ouri', the predecessor of Ben Uri Gallery in 1915, where he continued to experiment with decorative art and design as well as publishing articles and lecturing, prior to his sudden and mysterious disappearance from the capital in 1916.
Decorative artist, craftsman and founder of the Ben Uri Arts Society, Lazar Berson was born into a Jewish family in the village of Skopichky, Russia (now Skapiškis, Lithuania) on 16 October 1882. Little is known about his early life, although he probably spoke Yiddish at home and received a traditional Jewish religious education. At the turn of the century, he studied painting in St Petersburg, where he was influenced by the Jewish cultural renaissance and the renewed interest in Russian and Jewish folk art and craft. Berson took these ideas to Paris, where he continued his studies, probably as a student under Professor Cormon at the École des Beaux-Arts. Later, Berson described studying 'together with a prayer quorum of Jewish children', referring to the large number of mostly eastern-European Jewish émigré artists then working in Paris. Between 1911 and 1912 he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne alongside Marc Chagall, Léon Bakst, Moise Kisling and Jules Pascin, and lived at La Ruche (the beehive), at the same address as the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz. In contrast to other École de Paris artists who embraced modernist styles, Berson maintained a decorative and traditional folk art approach seeking to develop what he considered to be a specifically 'Jewish' style in art.
Following the outbreak of the First World War, Berson moved to London, where he set up a portrait studio and wrote articles for the Jewish and Yiddish press, espousing his uncompromising Jewish nationalist, Zionist, and fierce anti-assimilationist views. In 1915, he realised his long-held ambition of forming a society for Jewish artists and craftsmen unable to access the British art establishment, when he founded 'The Jewish-National Decorative Art Association (London) Ben Ouri', in Whitechapel's mainly Yiddish-speaking, Jewish ghetto. This enabled him to develop his primary interest in decorative art, and the carving of wooden vessels, plates and boxes with motifs drawn from ancient illuminated manuscripts. Between March 1915 and February 1916, Berson wrote over twenty long articles for Di Tsayt (The Jewish Times), the Yiddish language newspaper. These included a series on the theme of a Jewish national art, profiles of artists such as Josef Isräels and Antokolsky, and features on the British Museum and its collections of Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian art. Berson also lectured on art at the Working Lads Institute on Whitechapel Road, for example on Gustav Doré's art in January 1916. In the 'Ben Uri studio' in Notting Hill in west London, he brought together a number of East End émigré artisans, who together with the jeweller Moshe Oved (Edward Goodack), worked on a series of decorative 'Jewish' designs on wooden plates and bowls, examples of the former which can be found in the Ben Uri Collection. Notably, Berson intricately inscribed a wooden plate honouring Israel Zangwill, the Jewish writer, known as the Dickens of the Ghetto'. In addition, Berson produced the Ben ouri albom, 'one of the world's first Yiddish art albums', printed in the East End in 1916 by the Russian-born Hebraist Israel Narodiczky (1874–1942), as a fundraiser for Ben Uri.
By 1916, the Society had over 100 members and had organised many events, but in September of that year, Berson left without warning for the USA. According to another of Ben Uri's founder members, Judah Beach, Lazar Berson was later detained by the Nazis in Nice and deported to Poland, but survived the war and later resurfaced in Nice, where he continued to work as a painter until the end of his life. Lazar Berson died in Nice, France on 27 July 1954. Examples of Berson's work are held in UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection and the collection of the Jewish Museum, London. Berson's contribution to Ben Uri and to British visual culture has been much researched during the 2000s, and his decorative designs have been regularly exhibited at Ben Uri, while a carved wooden plate, thought lost, has been returned to its permanent collection.
Lazar Berson in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Lazar Berson]
Publications related to [Lazar Berson] in the Ben Uri Library