Ben Uri Research Unit

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


Willy Tirr artist

Willy Tirr was born in Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin, Poland) in 1915, immigrating to England in 1939 following the rise of Nazism. After being interned as an 'enemy alien' in Australia (having travelled on the infamous HMT Dunera), he settled in Leeds, where he taught at Leeds College of Art, later serving as Head of Fine Art (1968–80). A self-taught artist, he primarily created abstract paintings, drawing on both German Expressionism and the American Abstract Expressionist movement.

Born: 1915 Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin, Poland)

Died: 1991 Leeds, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1938

Other name/s: Willy Tichauer, William Tirr 


Biography

Painter and teacher Willy Tirr (né William Tichauer) was born in Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin, Poland) in 1915 and brought up in Berlin. Following the rise of Nazism, he fled to England via Holland in June 1939. His parents were able to join him, but most of his family perished in the Holocaust. Tirr settled in London, but following the introduction of mass internment in 1940, he was sent to Australia aboard the infamous HMT Dunera as an ‘enemy alien’. Returning to the UK, in 1941, he joined the army, eventually serving in the Intelligence Corps, where he was part of an early unit which entered Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (Charnley 1975, p. 75). After his marriage in 1942, he changed his name to Tirr. Following his demobilisation in 1946, he moved to Leeds, Yorkshire, where he built a successful business making lampshades before becoming a full-time painter. He painted in a self-built studio adjoining his house and moved in artistic circles that included Terry Frost, with whom he held a joint exhibition in York in 1957. He also made contacts with other artists connected with Leeds College of Art, such as Eric Atkinson. Tirr was initially appointed to the College in 1957, alongside Jacob Kramer to teach amateur evening classes (the College was absorbed into Leeds Polytechnic in 1962). He became Head of Fine Art in 1968, a post he held until his retirement in 1980. In 1971, while visiting the Corcoran School of Art in Washington DC (where he taught for three weeks), he expressed his views on art education, stating, ‘You educate people through art – you don’t educate them to produce art,’ adding that the artist was to be ‘a catalyst for ideas and a kind of touchstone for the values of the society’ (Slade 1972, p. 282).

A self-taught painter, Tirr produced abstract paintings, inspired by both German Expressionism and American Abstract Expressionism. He explored a secret world, ‘where shapes and colours, even textures and dimensions do not ever mean exactly what they appear to mean. The gaiety or starkness, the eeriness or complexity of his abstract fantasies strike on our visual sense with a deep pleasure. They awaken that dormant sense of mystery that we have never allowed to develop’ (Kapp 1969, p. 6). Tirr’s work, characterised by the fluidity of colours and the active interplay between space and areas of paint, was often a meditation on the theme of flight, as exemplified by Flight III (Ben Uri collection). This watercolour revealed Tirr’s admiration for J.M.W. Turner and the St Ives painters. Between the 1960s and 1980s, Tirr concentrated on capturing the movement of flight, drawing on his traumatic experiences as a refugee. He admitted that for him, there was 'an obsessive significance in the double meaning of the term' (cited in Manson p. 80). Tirr experimented with various media and techniques, including large shaped canvases in oil and acrylic, as well as collage. However, his focus remained on contemporary landscape painting in watercolours, often inspired by the dramatic, harsh scenery of Yorkshire. The Jewish Chronicle described Tirr’s watercolours as: 'delicate, yet dramatic. He gives tangible form, not to the actuality of landscape but to the mood created by the atmosphere, shadows and reflections’ (Fealdman 1992, p. 23).

A prolific artist, Tirr exhibited widely both in Britain and internationally. He participated as early as 1947 in Ben Uri’s Spring Exhibition of Painting, Sculpture and Drawings by Contemporary Jewish Artists, afterwards becoming a regular contributor to Ben Uri group shows, including Ten Artists, Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture (1965). In a review of the exhibition, the Jewish Chronicle noted that ‘Willy Tirr comes out of it best, with austere abstracts, like two creatures in contact painted unextravagantly and making a simple broad visual impact with depth and substance’ (Stone 1965, p. 33). Tirr’s first solo show was held at the New Vision Gallery, London (1958). Subsequent shows included: Grabowski Gallery (1970, founded by Polish refugee, Mateusz Grabowski); Leeds University Gallery (1988); Scarborough Art Gallery (1989), and Gallery North, Kirkby Lonsdale (1990).

In 1984, Tirr became artist-in-residence at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Musician Edward Cowie observed that 'Neither the tragedy of war, the passions of love and friendship, the tides of experience thrown up by the world journeyings, nor the ebb and flow of public taste in the arts has ever caused him to lose integrity or a richly spiritual personal identity' (cited in MacDougall 2020, p. 36). Willy Tirr died in Leeds, England in 1991. A memorial exhibition was held at Ben Uri the following year. Further posthumous exhibitions included the Gascoigne Gallery, Ilkley (2000). His work is held in UK collections, including Ben Uri Collection; Leeds University; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle; and Abbot Hall, Kendal (Lakeland Arts).

Related books

  • Sarah MacDougall ed., Interstices - Discovering the Ben Uri Collection Guest Curated by René Gimpel (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2020), pp. 36-37 
  • Peter Wakelin, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art (Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2019)
  • Finchleystrasse: German Artists in Exile in Great Britain and beyond 1933-45 (London: Ben Uri Gallery and Museum in association with the German Embassy London, 2018), p. 45 
  • James Charnley, ‘Into the Hangar’, in Creative License, from Leeds College of Art to Leeds Polytechnic (The Lutterworth Press, 2015), pp. 69-97 
  • Oil Paintings in Public Ownership in Camden (London: The Public Catalogue Foundation, 2013), p. 41 
  • David Manson, Willy Tirr (1915-1991): Figure in a Landscape (Milton Keynes: AuthorHouse UK, 2010)
  • Walter Schwab and Julia Weiner eds., Jewish Artists: the Ben Uri Collection - Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Sculpture (London: Ben Uri Art Society in association with Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, 1994), pp. 103, 152 
  • Peter Stone, ‘Willy Tirr's Forceful New Dimension’, Jewish Chronicle, 15 May 1970, p. 33  ‘Barry Fealdman writes’, Jewish Chronicle, 22 May 1992, p. 23 
  • Robert Clark, ’Willy Tirr’, The Guardian, 4 February 1988, p. 14   
  • Roy Slade and Willy Tirr, ‘Education in England and the Program at Leeds College’, Art Journal, Spring 1972, pp. 281-282
  • Helen Kapp, ‘Willy Tirr’, The Guardian, 16 January 1969, p. 6 
  • Peter Stone, ‘Austere Abstracts’, Jewish Chronicle, 25 June 1965, p. 33 
  • M. G. McNay, ‘Bill Wilkinson Exhibition at the Abbot Hall Gallery’, The Guardian, 1 May 1965, p. 6   
  • ‘Modern Art in Yorkshire’, The Times, 13 May 1960, p. 18 

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Association of Jewish Refugees (member)
  • Leeds College of Art (absorbed into Leeds Polytechnic in 1962) (Head of Fine Art)
  • University of Wollongong, Australia (artist-in-residence)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Interstices: Discovering the Ben Uri Collection, Curated by René Gimpel, Ben Uri Gallery (2020) 
  • Finchleystrasse: German Artists in Exile in Great Britain and Beyond 1933-45, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, London (2018) 
  • Jewish Artists in Yorkshire, Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds University, Leeds (2013) 
  • A Tribute to Willy Tirr, The Gascoigne Gallery, Harrogate (2000)
  • Watercolours by Willy Tirr, Gascoigne Gallery, Harrogate (2007)
  • Watercolours by Willy Tirr (1915-1991): a Memorial Exhibition, Ben Uri Gallery (1992) 
  • Past into Present, Paintings by Willy Tirr, University Gallery, Leeds (1988) 
  • Willy Tirr, Elizabethan Exhibition Gallery, Wakefield, Yorkshire (1982) 
  • Watercolours and Shaped Canvases, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester (1981)
  • Willy Tirr, Paintings, Grabowski Gallery, London (1979) 
  • Willy Tirr, Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds (1974) 
  • Annual Exhibition, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1970) 
  • Paintings by Willy Tirr, Caballa Gallery, Harrogate (1969) 
  • Ten Artists, Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1965) 
  • The Teaching Image, Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds (1964) 
  • Paintings by Willy Tirr / Sculpture by Austin Wright, Lane Gallery, Bradford (1963)
  • Exhibition of Recent Acquisitions (7th Collection) Friends of the Art Museums of Israel, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1962) 
  • Opening Exhibition, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1961) 
  • Modern Art in Yorkshire, Wakefield Art Gallery, Wakefield (1960) 
  • Willy Tirr and Terry Frost, Austin Hayes Gallery, York (1957)
  • Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1954) 
  • Spring Exhibition of Painting, Sculpture and Drawings by Contemporary Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1947) 
  Willy Tirr
   
Ben Uri collection

Willy Tirr in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Willy Tirr]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Willy Tirr] in the Ben Uri Library