Forced Journeys

"Forced Journeys" is a study of artists in exile in Britain between about 1933 and 1945. It deals with those artists mostly of German and Austrian descent who fled Nazi persecution, and comprises paintings, prints, sculpture, ceramics and posters by artists such as Kurt Schwitters, Jankel Adler, Hans Feibusch, Hans Schleger and Else and Ludwig Meidner. One of the main subjects is internment, as emigres were automatically interned for some months on their arrival in Britain, however distinguished they might be as artists. Schwitters, for instance, was interned on the Isle of Man, later settling in the Lake District, where he lived until his death in 1948. There are a number of works discussed that relate directly to the experience of internment, including a series of drawings by Fred Uhlman from observation and imagination, verging on the savage in their incisive linearity and satire. The book is valuable in shedding light for the first time on artists' experience of internment, as well as their response to their release and return to Blitz-torn London. Surveys of modern British art, particularly of the critical years between 1933 and 1945, rarely acknowledge the importance of the exile milieu. Rather than ghettoising the contribution of refugee artists, "Forced Journeys" examines the crucial impact of their work on the course of modern art in Britain.