Object Image

Refugees

Refugees is a rare, important early painting, thought lost for over 60 years. In 1948 Herman destroyed most of his work from this period, considering it too influenced by Chagall. Blue was the dominant colour of Herman’s Glasgow years, used as a nostalgic evocation of a lost Warsaw with its moonlit spires. Like much of Herman’s Glasgow work, this painting draws strongly on his eastern European Jewish heritage and themes. However, the refugees also represent the wider displacement of peoples uprooted and forced into exile by the upheavals of the Second World War - and of course have a powerful contemporary resonance. The family’s unknown fate is symbolized by the cat with a bleeding mouse dangli...
c. 1941
Gouache on paper
47.0 x 39.5cm
Images and text © Ben Uri collection, 2017

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