The Wiener Holocaust Library’s latest exhibition surveys the life and career of Jewish émigré sculptor Fred Kormis.
It will reunite some of the most important of his diverse works, from the woodcut prints he produced in a Prisoner of War camp, to the medallions he made of leading figures in British life, as well as some of his larger sculptural works, which include the first memorial in Britain to the victims of Nazi concentration camps.
Born in 1894 in Frankfurt into an Austrian and German Jewish family, sculptor and printmaker Fred (Fritz) Kormis’ life and career were shaped and disrupted by some of the most significant events of the twentieth century.
Kormis saw action and was wounded in the First World War as part of the Austrian army, before being held for four years as a prisoner of war in Siberia.
He worked as an artist during the politically and culturally tumultuous Weimar period, and during the Nazi era revealed himself to be Jewish, a decision that led to the removal of his art from galleries. Kormis and his wife Rachel Sender left Germany in 1933, and many of the works he left behind in Germany were lost.
In exile in relative poverty in Britain from 1934, Kormis formed deep links with many in the Jewish refugee community in London. During the war he had to rebuild his life and career once again, when his studio and much of the work he had produced in Britain were destroyed in an air raid.
Kormis’ artistic practice was varied and evolved over time, but his experiences as a prisoner of war created in him a lifelong preoccupation with memorialising and representing in sculptural form the emotional impact of captivity. This theme culminated in the 1960s in his Prisoner of War and Concentration Camp Victim memorial in Gladstone Park in London.
Fred Kormis repeatedly saw his career interrupted and his work damaged or destroyed, and the documentary record of his life before exile is fragmentary. This exhibition reunites a diverse range of Kormis’ artworks, borrowed from collections around the UK, and it recreates aspects of his life and career, drawing upon documents and photographs lodged at The Wiener Holocaust Library.
The exhibition attests to the versatility of Kormis’ practice as well as his ability to respond empathically to the human impact of the historical events, including the First World War and the Nazi era.
Exhibition Events
Gladstone Park, Dollis Hill: A talk on Fred Kormis, the sculptor behind the park’s Grade II listed Memorial, 29 September
Exhibition Talk – The woodcut print in Germany after WWI: Remorse, redemption, reparation, 7 November
Exhibition Event – Curators’ talk: Dr Barbara Warnock and Dr Helen Lewandowski, 12 November
Hybrid Exhibition Talk – Aurelia Young: My father, sculptor Oscar Nemon, 15 January
Hybrid Exhibition Talk – Dedication in Sculpture: The Story of Naomi Blake FRSS, 22 January
Insiders/ Outsiders Festival Virtual Talk – Arthur Fleischmann (1896-1990): A New Life in the UK, 29 January
Insiders/ Outsiders Festival Virtual Talk: Charlotte Mayer (1929-2022) – The Spiral of Life, 3 February
Press Coverage
Show shines light on overlooked artist who made UK’s first Holocaust memorial, The Guardian
Revamped Wiener Holocaust Library to reopen with exhibition on celebrated Jewish sculptor, The Art Newspaper
This artist escaped the Nazis, and created Britain’s first memorial to their victims, Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Sculptor Fred Kormis at Wiener Holocaust Library Bloomsbury, Ham & High
German Jewish sculptor’s art to show at reopening of Wiener Holocaust Library, Jewish News Syndicate
Wiener Holocaust Library set to open following major renovations, Jewish News
Fred Kormis: Sculpting the Twentieth Century, ArtLyst
A comprehensive look at the life and work of one of Britain’s preeminent German-Jewish émigré artists, Jewish Renaissance
For a full media pack please contact the Library’s Press and Communications Manager, Samantha Dulieu, [email protected].
Buy the catalogue
Fred Kormis: Sculpting the Twentieth Century
Fred (Fritz) Kormis was born at the end of the nineteenth century to a Jewish family in Frankfurt-am-Main. At 14 he was apprenticed to a sculpture and moulding workshop, studying art in the evening at Frankfurt Polytechnic.
It was to be the calm before the storm.
Fred Kormis’ life and work were shaped and disrupted by some of the most significant events of the first half of the twentieth century. He saw combat and capture in the First World War; five long years of captivity in a Siberian prisoner of war camp; exposure to the radical socialist politics of Weimar Germany; persecution in Nazi Germany; exile and migration to Britain; the Blitz in London; and the precarities of being a refugee in wartime in Britain including, for a time, the threat of detainment by the authorities as an ‘enemy alien’.
Drawing on the Fred Kormis Collection held at The Wiener Holocaust Library, this catalogue accompanies the exhibition Fred Kormis: Sculpting the Twentieth Century, at The Wiener Holocaust Library, 2024-25. It contains personal reflections of Kormis by David Aronsohn, and expert assessments of the sculptor’s extraordinary life, work and legacy.
