Martin Bloch (1883 Neisse, Germany – 1954 London, England)
Martin Bloch was born into an assimilated Jewish family in Neisse, Germany (now Nysa, Poland) in 1883. He initially trained as an architect, later studied drawing in Berlin and held his first solo exhibition at art dealer Paul Cassirer’s Gallery in Berlin in 1911. He lived in Paris and Spain between 1914 and 1920, then returned to Berlin to co-found a painting school with Anton Kerschbaumer and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Following the rise of Nazism, he fled to England (via Denmark), opening a second private painting school with Australian painter Roy de Maistre in London in 1936. He participated in the 'Exhibition of German-Jewish Artists' Work at the Parsons Gallery (1934) and his work was also exhibited in the 'Exhibition of Twentieth-Century German Art' at the New Burlington Galleries (1938) - intended as a riposte to the notorious Nazi 'Entartete Kunst' ('Degenerate Art') exhibition (1937). He held his first solo London show at the Lefevre Gallery in 1939.
Following the introduction of internment, he was interned, first at Huyton Camp, Liverpool, then briefly on the Isle of Man. Afterwards, he exhibited in Oxford and Cambridge in 1941. In 1948 he became a guest teacher in Minneapolis and exhibited in both Minneapolis and Princeton, New Jersey, then resumed his influential teaching career in England, where his fluid style of painting and spontaneous use of colour inspired his students at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (1949-54). He exhibited regularly with Ben Uri Gallery and held a joint exhibition with Josef Herman in 1949.
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