Exhibition Event – Insiders/Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe...

This event is organised as part of the event series. Visit the exhibition page to find out more.

Join us for an illustrated lecture by London-based art historian Monica Bohm-Duchen about the émigré sculptors who created so many of the works still visible in public spaces throughout the UK, whose names and life stories nevertheless remain too little examined.

Among the 300 or so visual artists who found sanctuary from Nazi persecution in the UK during the 1930s were a significant number of sculptors, whose practice included commissions for diverse public spaces. While many of these works have become a taken-for-granted feature of the (mostly) urban landscape, too little attention has been paid to those who created them.

This lecture will consider both their pre-and post-war careers, paying particular attention to the circumstances of their arrival, the challenges involved in their integration into British cultural life, and the support networks that enabled them to establish themselves and ultimately to thrive here.

Sculptors to be discussed include Siegfried Charoux, Peter László Peri, Georg Ehrlich, Franta Belsky, Ernst Müller-Blensdorf, Bernard Schottlander, Oscar Nemon and Fred Kormis.

This event is organised as part of , a nationwide arts festival celebrating refugees from Nazi Europe and their contribution to British culture

Monica Bohm-Duchen is an independent London-based writer, lecturer and curator. The institutions she has worked for include the Courtauld Institute of Art, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Tate, the National Gallery and the Royal Academy of Arts. Her many publications include After Auschwitz: Responses to the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Art and the Second World War. She is the Founding Director of Insiders/Outsiders, an ongoing celebration of the contribution made by refugees from Nazism to British culture, and editor of its companion volume, Insiders/Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe and their Contribution to British Visual Culture.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Wiener Holocaust Library, 29 Russell Square, London, United Kingdom