Ben Uri Research Unit

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


Martin Bloch artist

Martin Bloch was born into an assimilated Jewish family in Neisse, Germany (now Nysa, Poland) in 1883 and studied aesthetics and drawing in Berlin under Heinrich Wölfflin and Lovis Corinth. Following the rise of Nazism, Bloch fled to England, establishing his second art school, the School of Contemporary Painting, in London. Following internment as an 'enemy alien' in 1940, Bloch become known for his highly-coloured expressionist paintings and illustrations of the Blitz; he also taught at Camberwell School of Art, influencing a cohort of young painters (including Gillian Ayres) in the use of colour.

Born: 1883 Neisse, Germany (now Nysa, Poland)

Died: 1954 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1934


Biography

Painter and teacher, Martin Bloch was born into an assimilated Jewish family in Neisse, Germany (now Nysa, Poland) on 16 November 1883. He studied architecture in Berlin and took classes in aesthetics and drawing under Heinrich Woelfflin and Lovis Corinth. He held his first solo exhibition at Berlin's Paul Cassirer Gallery in 1911. During the First World War, Bloch travelled and worked in France and Spain, increasingly influenced by the colours and techniques of Cezanne and Matisse. In 1926 in Berlin he opened the Bloch-Kerschbaumer School, together with Anton Kerschbaum, to teach art.

After the Nazis classified his art as 'Degenerate' in 1933, Bloch fled to London, via Denmark, in 1934, opening the School for Contemporary Painting with Australian painter, Roy de Maistre, where his students included young refugee cousins, Harry Weinberger and Heinz Koppel. For Bloch, teaching meant helping aspiring artists to express their experiences and to appreciate their materials, while his earlier art training linked him to prewar modernist developments in Central Europe. Bloch became well-known for his landscapes and city scenes, paring down forms into simple shapes, conveying emotion through the use of heightened colours. Four of his oils were included in the Exhibition of German-Jewish Artists' Work: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture (1934) organised at the Parsons Gallery, London by German-Jewish émigré dealer, Carl Braunschweig (later Charles Brunswick), which included 86 artists persecuted by the Nazi regime. Bloch was also an early refugee exhibitor with Ben Uri Gallery (1936 and 1937) and he participated in the important Exhibition of Twentieth-Century German Art at the New Burlington Galleries in 1938. The same year, he held his first solo UK show at the Cambridge University Arts Society, followed by his first solo London show at the Lefevre Galleries in 1939. Reviewing the latter, The Times noted that Bloch had 'a remarkable gift for suggesting relations in space by means of colour [...] and at the same time bringing out what may be called the personalities of buildings' (The Times 1939, p. 12).

In 1940, Bloch was interned as an 'enemy alien', first at Huyton outside Liverpool and then at Sefton Camp on the Isle of Man, recording his experiences in many drawings and, after his release in 1941, in the painting Miracle in the Internment Camp (1941, Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge), showing a dish of herrings miraculously transformed into mermaids as five men sit around a table. Postwar, Bloch held solo exhibitions in Canada and the USA, and spent time in Wales, drawn to the atmospheric landscape, particularly around Bangor, which he first visited in 1947. In the early 1950s he stayed with his friend and fellow artist, Polish refugee, Joseph Herman, in the miners' village, Ystradginlais. Bloch's painting Down From Bethesda Quarry (1951, National Museum Cardiff), depicting workers at the slate quarry at Bethesda in Gwynedd, featured in the 1951 Festival of Britain exhibition. Bloch was granted British citizenship in 1947. From 1949 until his death he taught at Camberwell School of Art, where his fluid style of painting and spontaneous use of colour inspired many students, including Gillian Ayres. A regular exhibitor with Ben Uri, he showed jointly with Herman in 1949 and a memorial exhibition was presented in 1963.

Martin Bloch died in London, England on 19 June 1954, the year Tate acquired The Mississippi at Minneapolis, previously shown in Ben Uri's 1951 exhibition. In 1955 the Beaux Art Gallery held a retrospective, comprising 34 paintings and drawings, dating from 1914–54. Earlier subjects, including Basque washerwomen in sunlight, showed the influence of Munch, Cézanne and Matisse. The majority of exhibits were British landscapes from Bloch’s mature period, of which art critic John Berger commented: 'The brush strokes are loose but tentative. On the surface his pictures have a worn look […] but beneath this wornness, this mellowness, there is an engraver's precision. Every turn, rise and fall of the hill and street is there, but reticently so because Bloch believed that the spirit with which the whole subject was seen as more important than any single part' (Berger 1955, p. 321). In 1957, Temple Newsam House, Leeds showed 44 paintings and 19 drawings; art critic and scholar Albert Charles Sewter observed 'a belated recognition of [Bloch's] quality' [...] This exhibition makes it clear that, in spite of a small total output, Bloch certainly deserves to be ranked among the masters of the German expressionist movement' (Sewter 1957, p. 5). In 1957, the South London Art Gallery presented a large retrospective, including landscapes, still lives and nudes. More recently, in 2007, two retrospectives were held independently, at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, and at the South London Art Gallery, while in 2009-10 his work featured in Ben Uri's touring exhibition Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain c. 1933-45. Ben Uri has regularly shown Bloch's collection works during the 2010s, notably in its centenary exhibition, Out of Chaos Ben Uri: 100 Years in London (2015). Bloch’s work is represented in UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the British Museum and Tate.

Related books

  • Peter Wakelin, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art (Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2019)
  • Out of Chaos: Ben Uri 100 Years in London (London: Ben Uri, 2015)
  • Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson eds., Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain, c. 1933-45 (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2009)
  • Martin Bloch: A Painter's Painter, exhib. cat. (Norwich: Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (World Art Collections Exhibitions), 2007)
  • Peter Rossiter and Michael Podro, Martin Bloch 1883–1954: an Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings, exhib. cat. (London: South London Art Gallery, 2007)
  • Jutta Vinzent, Identity and Image: Refugee Artists from Nazi Germany in Britain (1933–1945) (Kromsdorf/Weimar: VDG Verlag, 2006) pp. 249-298
  • Shulamith Behr and Marian Malet eds., Arts in Exile in Britain 1933–1945: Politics and Cultural Identity, The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, Vol. 6 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004)
  • Jutta Vinzent, 'Bloch, Martin (1883–1954)', in H C G Matthew and Brian Howard Harrison eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
  • Martin Bloch and Caroline Da Costa, Martin Bloch, 1883-1954, exhibition catalogue (South London Art Gallery, 1984)
  • David Sinclair, 'Brushing-up on an Artist who Hid his Work from the World', The Times, 4 January 1984, p. 6
  • 'The Gentler Sort of Expressionism. Earlier Work by Martin Bloch', The Times, 19 March 1959, p. 4
  • Stephen Bone, 'Martin Bloch in Retrospect. Landscape Harmonies', The Manchester Guardian, 10 January 1958, p. 5
  • 'A Poetic Colourist. Martin Bloch. Paintings by Martin Bloch', The Times, 2 January 1958, p. 8
  • Stephen Bone, ‘Jewish Artists In England: Tercentenary Exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery’, The Manchester Guardian, 9 November 1956, p. 7
  • John Berger, 'Martin Bloch', The New Statesman and Nation, Vol. 49, Fasc. 1252, 5 March 1955, pp. 321-322
  • 'Lefevre Galleries', The Times, 8 February 1939, p. 12

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Bloch-Kerschbaumer School, Berlin (founder and teacher)
  • Camberwell School of Art (teacher)School of Contemporary Painting (founder and teacher) (teacherfounder and teacher)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Painting with an Accent: German-jewish Emigre Stories, curated by Ben Uri at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, London (2024)
  • Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art, The Royal West of England Academy, Bristol (2019)
  • Finchleystrasse: German Artists in exile in Great Britain and beyond 1933–45, curated by Ben Uri at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, London (2018)
  • Out of Chaos: Ben Uri 100 Years in London, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London (2015)
  • Martin Bloch: a Painter’s Painter, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich (2007)
  • Martin Bloch 1883–1954: an Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings, South London Art Gallery (2007)
  • Kunst im Exil in Großbritannien 1933–1945 [Art in Exile in Great Britain], Schloss Charlottenburg, West Berlin (1986)
  • Paintings and Drawings by Martin Bloch, South London Art Gallery (1984)
  • Crane Kalman Gallery, London (1979)
  • A Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings by Martin Bloch, Crane Kalman Gallery (1974)
  • Paintings from the Ben Uri Art Gallery, Ben Uri Gallery (1970)
  • Martin Bloch – Memorial Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings, Ben Uri Art Gallery, London (1963)
  • Drawings by Martin Bloch, Leicester Galleries (1961)
  • Earlier Work by Martin Bloch, Kaplan Gallery, London (1959)
  • New Shakespeare Gallery, Liverpool (1958)
  • 40th Anniversary Exhibition: Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture, Ben Uri Gallery (1956)
  • Beaux Art Gallery (1955)
  • Festival of Jewish Arts, McLellan Galleries, Glasgow (1951)
  • Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Jewish Painters and Sculptors, Ben Uri Gallery (1950)
  • Martin Bloch, Josef Herman: Paintings and Drawings, Ben Uri Art Gallery, London (1949)
  • Ben Uri Collection Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings, Ben Uri Gallery (1946)
  • Exhibition of War Pictures, Artists' International Association (1941)
  • Paintings and Work in Black and White by Martin Bloch, Lefevre Gallery, London (1939)
  • Exhibition of Twentieth-Century German Art, New Burlington Galleries, London (1938)
  • Paintings and Drawings by Martin Bloch, Terracottas by Frank Dobson, Cambridge University Arts Society in (1938)
  • Exhibition of German-Jewish Artists' Work: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Parsons Gallery, London (1934)
  Martin Bloch
   
Ben Uri collection

Martin Bloch in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Martin Bloch]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Martin Bloch] in the Ben Uri Library