This exhibition unfolds the remarkable story of the Abbey Art Centre, a cosmopolitan art colony established at New Barnet in 1946 by charismatic artist, gallerist and collector William Ohly (1883–1955). A crucible of creativity on London’s northern edge, the Abbey was a postwar haven for stateless Jewish refugees as well as artists from Australia, Britain and continental Europe. A seedbed for cross-cultural and transnational modernism, the Abbey proved pivotal to the careers of many artists as they navigated the seismic political and cultural shifts taking place in postwar Britain and beyond.
Art and politics were an inextricable part of Ohly’s life. Born in England to German parents, he trained at the State Academy in Frankfurt in the late 1890s. Much of his work as a sculptor of fountains, architectural bas reliefs and monuments in Cologne, Frankfurt and Berlin was destroyed during the Second World War. Ohly’s humanism was forged during the First World War and subsequent turbulence of the Weimar Republic. Mingling in avant-garde circles in Berlin, he dreamt of creating a communal centre for artists on a non-profit basis. With the rise of Nazism in 1933 he escaped to England, immersing himself in London’s art world, émigré networks, and anti-fascist and pro-working-class politics. In late 1941, during the Blitz, he opened the Berkeley Galleries in Mayfair, exhibiting fellow Hitler émigrés, including Katerina Wilczynski, Milein Cosman and Fred Kormis, and artists from the Commonwealth and countries then on the cusp of decolonisation, including James Cant, Ben Enwonwu, Kofi Antubam and Denis Williams, alongside works from his own world art collection and—shortly—artists from the Abbey Art Centre.
By 1946 Ohly had purchased the Abbey Folk Park at New Barnet and established the Abbey Art Centre in 1947. His benevolence towards transient outsiders and refugees defined this colony that traversed national boundaries, offering affordable lodgings, studios and a cosmopolitan community. Artists included Nazi refugees from continental Europe: sculptor Inge King, painters and printmakers Helen Grunwald, Marcel Frishman and Margret Kroch-Frishman, and pioneering German animator Lotte Reiniger. From 1947 until 1954 a swathe of young Australian artists, including Robert Klippel, Grahame King and Mary Webb, arrived in London and by word of mouth found their way to Ohly’s artist colony. They mingled with British artists at the start of their careers, including Alan Davie, Phillip Martin and Peter King, as well as Irish-Australian Helen Marshall and Polish-Australian Stacha Halpern. Many formed enduring friendships and artistic partnerships at the Abbey.
After Ohly’s death, in 1955, a memorial exhibition of his work at the Berkeley Galleries was opened by National Gallery director Sir Philip Hendy. Today, 70 years after his death, this exhibition celebrates both the Abbey Art Centre as a site of postwar refuge and Ohly’s role within it as artist, friend, gallerist, patron, collector and humanist. This floor foregrounds those intersecting roles via his world art collection and its influence on emerging avant-garde artists. The lower galleries explore socially conscious painter-printmakers (including Ohly) working in London’s East End before and after the Second World War, as well as the role of nature at the Abbey and the work and influence of Lotte Reiniger.
With sincere thanks to our lenders: Austin Desmond Fine Art; the Käthe Deutsch Collection; Mrs. Federica Frishman; the Collection of Michael Graham Stewart; the Mark Hill Collection, London; the Peter King Estate; Simon Pierse; Suzan Stockwell; Angela Varga (The Artist’s Collection, Vienna); Hermione Waterfield; Alan Wheatley Art, London; and those private lenders who prefer to remain anonymous. For permission to exhibit facsimiles, we are most grateful to Jo Tanaka-King and Angela Hey for the work of Grahame King and to Seraphina Martin and Pierre Cavalan for the work of Helen Marshall and Phillip Martin. We also thank the Ben Uri Research Unit, and Ethan Frieze for gallery assistance.
The Abbey as Postwar Refuge, 1946–56 coincides with the publication of The Abbey Art Centre in postwar London 1946–1956, edited by Jane Eckett, Ian McLean and Sheridan Palmer, published by Routledge.
Curated by Simon Pierse, Jane Eckett, Sheridan Palmer and Sarah MacDougall.
