Following the rise of Nazism and the chaos of global warfare in the 1930s–40s, over 50 art dealers, largely but not exclusively Jewish, were driven out of Continental Europe to seek refuge in Britain. Settling in London, they fostered new ties within the existing British art world and joined an ever-growing artistic émigré network. Founding galleries that welcomed international art trends, their presence had a transformative effect on the insular British art scene of the 1930s. Over three decades, they played a major, but still under-acknowledged, role in transforming London into a world art capital to rival New York and Paris. This was celebrated in 1964 in an exhibition at the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, called Cosmopolis: The School of London, which claimed London as the heir to interwar Paris on the basis of an art world made diverse and vibrant by immigration and which inspired the present exhibition’s title.
Founded on new doctoral research, Cosmopolis offers an episodic, rather than comprehensive, history of 21 individuals who had a measurable influence on the modern and contemporary art market from the 1930s to the 1960s. The exhibition highlights the dealers’ stories and, in parallel, the artists they promoted and the new networks and spaces they created for artistic exchange and dissemination. Four key areas of activity are explored: the introduction of German modernism to a largely indifferent and Francophile British public (Carl Braunschweig and Alfred Flechtheim); the opening of wartime galleries that sustained Britain’s émigré artists through the Blitz (Jack Bilbo, Lea Bondi Jaray, Paul Wengraf and Roland, Browse and Delbanco); the postwar rebuilding of London’s devastated art market on an international footing (Hanover Gallery, Gimpel Fils, and Marlborough Fine Art); and the promotion of Black and South Asian artists arriving from the Commonwealth in the 1940s and 1950s (William Ohly, Annely Juda and Mateusz Grabowski).
| Duration | 26 June 2024 - 06 September 2024 |
| Times | Wednesday to Friday 10 am - 5.30 pm |
| Cost | Free |
| Venue | Ben Uri Gallery |
| Address | 108A Boundary Road, London, NW8 0RH |
| Contact | / info@benuri.org.uk / www.benuri.org.uk |