Monday 14 January 2013

Jankel Adler



No Man's Land, 1943

 
Cleron, the Cat Breeder, 1925

 Composition, c.1943

 Landscape, 1953

 The Game, 1933

  
 The Poet

 
Ein Jude, c.1926

Jankel Adler was born in Tuszyn, near Łódź in 1895. His family were orthodox Jews, and he was the seventh of ten children. Having studied engraving with his uncle in Belgrade, Adler travelled throughout Europe, and took up a teaching post at the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf alongside Paul Klee. Influenced by Picasso and Leger as well as Klee, Adler's art was inevitably labelled “degenerate” by the Nazis, and he fled Germany for Paris in 1933. None of his siblings survived the Holocaust. He enlisted with the Polish army when World War II broke out but was discharged due to health reasons, following which he settled in Scotland and later London. He died in Aldbourne in 1949. More on Adler: one, two, three, four.