Jankel Adler

Gimpel Fils, London

London, The Arts Council of Great Britain, Adler Memorial, 1951, cat. no. 48
Tel Aviv, TeL Aviv Museum of Art, Jankel Adler 1895-1945, 23 December 1985 - 11 February 1986, p. 140, no. 94, illustrated in the exhibition catalogue

In good condition. The canvas is not lined. The colors are bright. Scattered craquelure. A 3 inch horizontal line of craquelure at upper right lifting slightly from the surface. Canvas buckles at lower left UV: No apparent inpainting.
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Born in Lodz, Poland in 1895, Adler moved to Germany in 1913 where he established himself as a significant force in the German art world of the 1920s, participating in every important Expressionist show. His studies with Gustav Wiethuechter, at the School of Arts and Crafts in Barmen influenced his persistent interest in the technique of painting and the exploration of new textures. He was also greatly influenced by Picasso and Klee, with whom he taught at the Düsseldorf Staatlich Kunstakademie and shared an adjoining studio. In 1933 he was forced to leave Germany, first settling in Glasgow in 1941, and then in London in 1943, where he exerted a major influence on postwar British painting. "Some critics have remarked upon the affinity between the grave seriousness of Jankel Adler's figures, his firmly constructed compositions, and the strength and severity of the Jewish orthodox religion in which he was raised. Some see Adler's paintings a blending of the mathematical clarity of the Talmud with the mysticism of the Cabbala." (Avram Kampf, Chagall to Kitaj Jewish Experience in 20th Century Art, Barbican Art Gallery, London (exhibition catalogue), 1990, p. 87).