Fred (né Manfred) Uhlman was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Stuttgart, Germany 19 January 1901 and trained as a lawyer. He became a self-taught painter while living in Paris, where he fled following Hitler's accession to the German Chancellorship in 1933, and where he gained a reputation as a ‘naïve’ artist, holding his first solo exhibition in 1936. In 1938 he moved to England with his aristocratic wife Diana Croft, and their Hampstead home became the headquarters of the Free German League of Culture and the Artists’ Refugee Committee, and a centre of émigré activity during the war. In 1938 he had the first of two solo shows at the Zwemmer Gallery, London, and participated in the Exhibition of Twentieth Century German Art at the New Burlington Galleries in London, intended as a riposte to the Nazi 'Degenerate Art' exhibition, mounted in Munich in 1937. During his six-month internment as a so-called 'enemy alien' at Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man in 1940, he produced around 150 drawings, some later published as 'Captivity' by Jonathan Cape in 1946.
Uhlman exhibited regularly throughout the war and afterwards, holding solo shows at galleries including the Leicester Galleries (1942), the Redfern Gallery (1953), Plymouth City Art Gallery (1966), and Camden Arts Centre (1973), and participated in numerous group exhibitions including with the Artists' International Association (AIA), the London Group, and at Ben Uri Gallery (from 1945). Uhlman had a profound artistic engagement with Wales over three decades and held a retrospective at Powys Hall, Bangor in 1960. He later published his autobiography, 'The Making of an Englishman', in 1960, followed by his novel, 'Reunion', in 1977. Fred Uhlman died in London, England on 11 April 1985. His work is represented in numerous UK collections including the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Government Art Collection, the Imperial War Museum and the V&A.
