Church Times: Debt owed to Jewish refugee art

My latest article for Church Times is about influential works by émigré Jewish artists, now under threat, and our debt owed to Jewish refugee art:

'St John’s, Waterloo, is home to two murals by the émigré artist Hans Feibusch. Its Vicar, Canon Giles Goddard, understands more than most the significance of this period, and the issues raised: “Our Feibusch murals have graced St John’s and focused our thoughts for almost 70 years.

“But it is only now that we, and other churches blessed with works of this period, are beginning to see the bigger picture. What did Feibusch and his fellow non-Christian artists bring to our faith and to our understanding of the post-war world? How can we save their legacy, so significant and yet so much at risk? And how can we respond to the art of refugees in Britain today?”

Nick Braithwaite, great-nephew of George Mayer-Marton, is campaigning to save his great-uncle’s vast 1955 Crucifixion mural — a rare combination of fresco and mosaic — at the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Rosary, Oldham. He says that these artists brought an “infusion of Continental modernist energy into a conservative art scene in the UK”.'

The article is based on a conference to be held at St John's Waterloo on 16 June - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-jewish-jesus-art-and-faith-in-the-shadow-of-world-war-ii-registration-128521672783. 

Other of my articles about the art of refugees can be found at:

• From the Polish spirit
• Refugee Artists Learning from The Lives Of Others
• United in life, art, and death
• Marian Bohusz-Szyszko

Other of my pieces for Church Times can be found here.

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Leonard Cohen - Born In Chains.

Thought for the Week: Respair

I’ve written the Thought for the Week at St Martin-in-the-Fields this week:

Our HeartEdge friends at St John’s Waterloo have their annual Arts Festival in May and June before closing for a major restoration, their first since 1951. The Waterloo Festival celebrates the 70th anniversary of the Festival of Britain, a “return of hope”, for which St John’s, badly damaged by a war-time bomb, was restored and made the official Festival Church. Now, as then, out of a period of crisis and loss comes a fresh determination to make the world a better place.

The Festival is called Respair, the return of hope after a period of despair, a word that fell out of use many centuries ago but one they are reviving as we celebrate the brighter future that vaccines will bring and the rebirth of real-life creativity and shared experience.

Among the stories of hope being shared is that of Jewish émigré artists who used Christian iconography, worked for the Church and contributed to cultural life in post-war Britain. Hans Feibusch, for one, arrived in the UK in the 1930’s and received church commissions which enabled him to survive and thrive. He painted two magnificent murals at St John’s and came to be responsible for more murals in Church of England churches than any other artist in its entire history.

This is a story of effective interfaith dialogue and enjoyment of others' creativity. It is a story where the Church is at the heart of welcome and hospitality combined with awareness of the immense contribution that refugees make to the culture and economy of the countries to which they travel. If it becomes a story we can reinhabit as a nation, then we will know respair.

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Leonard Cohen - It Seemed The Better Way.