Fred Kormis 1897-1986
Prophet
plaster
46.2 x 19.1 x 8
1992-6
@Fred Kormis estate
Photo: Bridgeman images
Kormis’ most important work remained distinctly personal in origin. He first exhibited a maquette for a Memorial for a war cemetery at a solo exhibition at the Berkeley Galleries, West...
Kormis’ most important work remained distinctly personal in origin. He first exhibited a maquette for a Memorial for a war cemetery at a solo exhibition at the Berkeley Galleries, West London, in May 1946, believing that ‘the post-war world need[ed] artistically significant monuments which serve[d] no immediate utilitarian purpose’. For the rest of his working life he wrestled with the problem of how to deliver a war memorial which combined both ‘bereavement and hope’, eventually resulting in his Monument to Prisoners of War erected in Gladstone Park, Dollis Hill, in 1970. His works on these themes also includes 'Marchers' (1974), outside King’s College London, and a supporting, emblematic series of prophets. An earlier study for a memorial, exhibited in 1946, included an adolescent boy called 'The Young Prophet'. This piece may be a maquette for a later iteration of this subject.
Provenance
presented by Willi Soukop RA 1992Exhibitions
Forced Journeys Tour: Artists in Exile in Britain, c. 1933-45Literature
Walter Schwabe and Julia Weiner, eds., Jewish Artists: the Ben Uri Collection - Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Sculpture (London: Ben Uri Art Society in association with Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, 1994), p. 132.Be the first to know – Sign Up
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