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Adler, Jankel [1895-1949. Poland/UK. Painter/Graphic Designer/Printmaker]

 

Jankel Adler was born in Tuszyn, near Lódz in Poland on 26 July 1895. On leaving school he served an apprenticeship as an engraver (1912-13) before studying art at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Barman (now called Wuppertal) under Gustav Wiethüchter, Germany and at the Akademie der Kunste in Düsseldorf in Germany (1911-14).

During World War One he served in the Russian Army. After the war he returned to Poland and was an active member of Ing Idisz, an association of young Jewish artists in Lódz.

During the 1920s he travelled extensively in Europe before taking up a teaching post at the Akademie der Kunste in Düsseldorf in 1931. Following the denouncement of Adler's work as degenerate by the National Socialists in 1933, he left Germany for Paris where he remained until 1940. During this time he worked with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17. In 1940 he joined the Free Polish Army with whom he went to Britain. He settled first in Glasgow and then in London, subsequently becoming an influential figure in the art scene.

Adler is known to have designed at least one book jacket - for 'The Cosmological Eye' by Henry Miller (London: Nicholson & Watson, 1945).

He died Aldbourne, Wiltshire, England on 25 April 1949

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Profile of Jankel Adler courtesy of Peter Nahum at The Leicester Galleries:

Jankel Adler was born into a large Jewish family in Tuszyn, Poland. In 1911, he entered the Barmen School of Arts and Crafts in Dusseldorf, studying under Gustav Wiethuechter. In 1914, he was conscripted into the Russian Army and was soon captured by the Germans. In 1918, released from captivity, he returned to and exhibited in Warsaw. His first commission - a set of frescoes for the Dusseldorf Planetarium - came in 1925. He returned and settled in Dusseldorf after three years of travel in Germany, Mallorca and Spain. He took a teaching post in the Dusseldorf Academy teaching alongside Paul Klee, who was to play a significant part in his development, who had left the Bauhaus in 1929. Labeled a degenerate, he fled to Paris in 1933.

He returned to Warsaw in 1935 for a large retrospective exhibition, which included works recovered from Dusseldorf by the Polish Government. Having returned to France he volunteered for the Polish Army at the outbreak of the Second World War, but released on medical grounds was evacuated to Scotland in 1940. Having settled in Scotland he had an exhibition in Glasgow in 1942.

In 1943 he moved to London where he lived until 1948. During this period he exhibited in the Lefevre Gallery, London and the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels and had his first American exhibition at the Knoedler Galleries in New York. It was while living and working in London that he was to have a studio in the same building as Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde, in Bedford Gardens. With his experience of Paul Klee and study of Léger and Picasso, he was instrumental in bringing a new language and vision to their work.
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Photograph of Jankel Adler

Photograph of Jankel Adler

Bibliography

1. Janel Adler 1895-1949 Cologne, Germany: Du Mont, 1985 (Catalogue of an exhibition at the Stadtliche Kunsthalle in 1985)

 2. Jankel Adler. Introduction by S.W. Hayter. London: Nicholson & Watson, 1948
See: 1 Record for Adler, Jankel in DAR