Émigré Encounters: Artist Refugees from Nazism in London and Lisbon
British Art – Convergence
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Date
- 18:00 / Cancelled 18:00 / Sold out Monday, 18:00
Location
Room 2 Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
We present a series of gatherings around the exhibition ‘British Art – Convergence,’ with talks about the networks resulting from the flow of artists and cultural agents between Portugal and the United Kingdom.
This two-part talk examines the contrasting patterns of migration of refugees from Nazism, mainly, but not exclusively, Jewish, who settled in London and Lisbon between 1933 and 1943.
The conversation will also focus on the émigré networks they created with fellow artists and art dealers and the cultural associations they established to negotiate economic and artistic challenges in their new host cities.
Sarah MacDougall and Inês Fialho Brandão explore these patterns and networks with reference to London and Lisbon identifying successive waves of migration that followed Hitler’s accession to the German Chancellorship that culminated in the so-called Entartete Kunst exhibition, mounted in Munich in 1937, and increased migration in the wake of the Anschluss and Kristallnacht.
Each of the speakers will discuss the artists who settled in safe European capitals, such as Erich Kahn, Henry Gotlib, Kurt Schwitters , in England, and Gretchen Wohlwill and Max Braumann in Lisbon, as well in transient artists, such as Ella Bergman Michel and Lazslo Moholy Nagy, in London, and Arpad Szenes and Wanda Ostrowska, in Lisbon.
The session will take place in English, with simultaneous translation into Portuguese and interpretation into Portuguese Sign Language.
Speakers
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Inês Fialho Brandão
Inês Fialho Brandão coordinates the Cultural Mediation and Digital Strategy department at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. Her research focuses on forced migratory movements and the restitution of cultural goods. She is a visiting assistant professor at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities of the NOVA University of Lisbon, holds a PhD in History from the University of Maynooth and a master’s degree in Islamic Studies and Museology from New York University. She is a member of the Scientific Council of the Observatory for the Teaching of History in Europe, an organisation of the Council of Europe.”
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Sarah MacDougall
Sarah MacDougall is a freelance curator and consultant, as well as Head of Collections and Special Projects at Ben Uri Gallery and Museum in London, focusing on the Jewish, refugee and émigré contribution to British visual culture since 1900. She has also written and lectured widely on this subject, including a biography of Mark Gertler (John Murray, 2002) and a monograph on David Bomberg (co-author, Ben Uri, 2017). She is a committee member of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies (University of London) and co-edited ‘Yearbook 19 on the Applied Arts in British Exile from 1933’ (2019). She is scientific coordinator of the exhibition ‘British Art – Convergence’.
Programme
18:00 / Introduction
18:05 / Émigré Encounters: Artist Refugees from Nazism in London
18:25 / Émigré Encounters: Artist Refugees from Nazism in Lisbon
18:45 / Talk
19:15 / Q&A
19:30 / Closing
Duration: 90 min.
Credits
Erich Kahn, 'The Refugees'. Berardo Collection
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