Samson Schames was born into one of the oldest Orthodox Jewish families in Frankfurt, Germany in 1898 and later graduated in painting, graphics and set design from the city's Kunst und Gewerbeschule, working initially as a theatrical designer. In order to avoid Nazi persecution, in 1939 he fled to England, where he was interned in 1940 as a so-called 'enemy alien'. After his release he exhibited extensively in London and became known for his mosaics and paintings incorporating broken and found materials scavenged from bombsites, before immigrating to the USA in 1948.
Artist Samson (Siegfried) Schames was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1898 into one of the citiy's oldest Orthodox Jewish families. He graduated in painting, graphics and set design from the Kunst und Gewerbeschule [Higher Education for Applied Artistic Training] (now Städelschule) in 1923, afterwards working as a theatrical designer. Schames also produced textile and tapestry designs featuring Bauhaus elements typical of mid-1920s Weimar. Following the rise of anti-Semitic legislation, as of 1934 he was no longer able to freely exhibit, instead becoming a member of the newly-formed Kulturbund Deutscher Juden [Jewish Cultural Association] for which he created set designs until 1936.
After the Kristallnacht pogroms of November 1938, Schames fled to England via Holland in January 1939. His art was classified as ‘degenerate’ by Hitler's regime, and many of his paintings were later destroyed. In London, Schames was among the early members of the Free German League of Culture (FGLC), a politically inspired, left-leaning organisation offering cultural support to anti-Nazi German refugees in Britain throughout the war. He attended its weekly figure-drawing sessions and painted in a spare room belonging to Dortmund-born sculptor Benno Elkan. In 1940 Schames was interned as a so called ‘enemy alien’ in Huyton Camp, near Liverpool, where he continued to create art, developing new techniques in unconventional media, mostly detritus found in camp. He used cuttings from his beard to make paint brushes and made pigment from soot mixed with thick condensed milk. He later recalled: ‘That made the most marvellous black I ever used' (‘Search for Samson Schames’, LBI website). The Observer art critic Jan Gordon commented: ‘In an internment camp with nothing but shoe black, condensed milk, and other domestic material, he painted passionate studies, and The Wandering Jew made from barbed wire testifies to the real acuity of his imagination’ (Gordon 1942, p. 7). After his release, along with fellow émigré artists, Jack Bilbo and Susan Einzig, Schames volunteered for the Civil Defence Service, recording his Blitz experience in a series of paintings entitled Bombed-Out London’. Given the lack of traditional art materials, Schames incorporated shards of glass, nails, china and stones, often scavenged from bomb sites, as exemplified by The Tear (1941, Leo Baeck Institute), where scratches and fragments of material outlined a weeping face. Schames' ‘strange moving, tragic, incised and mosaic works’ (Gordon 1942, p. 7) powerfully depicted the tragedy of Jewish persecution and the atrocities of war, combining highly symbolic elements from Jewish religion and culture with motifs from daily life.
During the war, Schames held three solo exhibitions in London: one at the Cooling Gallery (1940) and two at fellow German refugee, Jack Bilbo’s Modern Art Gallery (1942 and 1943). In a review of the former, the Jewish Chronicle noted that Schames' ‘[...] sense of colour has developed considerably since he has got away from the influence of the harshnesses of Pechstein and Kokoschka. The colour of England seems to suit his brush and the work done since he has been here is by far his best’ (Jewish Chronicle 1940, p. 33). He also contributed regularly to Civil Defence, FGLC and Ben Uri exhibitions and his work was well-received in the press. The Times singled out his ‘very rich and dark’ Blitzed Shop at the CDA exhibition at the Cooling Galleries (The Times 1942, p. 8), and the New Statesman and Nation described his concrete and mosaic Madonna and Child, which incorporated fragments of glass and china from bomb-damaged houses, ‘the best thing in the show’ (1942, p. 424). In 1943 he participated in Artists Aid Jewry Exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, displaying four works, including a cartoon for a mosaic entitled Fugitives. In the 1944 CDA exhibition he presented large paintings with squarish dabs of colour simulating mosaic, alongside unconventional mosaics comprised of coloured glass, broken crockery, old tins and nails. The Times praised his ingenuity in manipulating these unusual materials (The Times 1944, p. 8). In the same year, his work Blitz featured in the Exhibition of Drawings Paintings & Sculptures by Free German Artists at the Charlotte Street Centre, supported by the AIA and arranged by the FGLC. Schames also produced theatre designs, including for a production of Congreve’s The Old Bachelor on a revolving stage, which displayed great ‘gaiety and ingenuity’ (Manchester Guardian 1943, p. 4).
In 1948, Schames immigrated to the USA, where he continued his career. Samson Schames died in New York, USA in 1967. His work is not currently represented in UK public collections. It is held by the Leo Baeck Institute (LBI) and Yeshiva University Museum, New York, and the Jewish Museum, Frankfurt, which held a major retrospective in 1989. Schames' work was included in Jack Bilbo and the Moderns at England & Co, London (1990). In 2010, his painting Snowdrops depicting white-helmeted military police featured in Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain c. 1933-45, a Ben Uri touring exhibition, Sayle Gallery, Douglas, Isle of Man, marking 70 years since internment.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Samson Schames]
Publications related to [Samson Schames] in the Ben Uri Library