Martin Bloch

1930s

After Kerschbaumer's death in 1931, Bloch's art school continued with Schmidt-Rottluff as his partner. Whilst Bloch associated with the Die Brücke circle, and he clearly had an affinity with French Fauvism, his paintings refuse easy categorisation. 

With the rise of the Nazis, and especially when Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933, Germany became increasingly unsafe.  The mood of Bloch's last Italian paintings, 'Thunderstorm Approaching' (1930) in the UK Government Art Collection, and 'Italian Butcher's Shop' (1930) with its mask of Mussolini, oblivious peasants and dead meat, is distinctly ominous.  His Berlin street scenes from 1933,  'Fehrberlinerplatz, Berlin', now in Leicester's German Expressionist Collection, and 'Kurfurstendamm, Berlin', now in Leeds City Art Gallery, show a tense city, full of apprehension. As a Jew, and as secretary of the Berlin Reichsverbandes Bildender Kunstler Deutschlands (a professional association for fine artists in Weimar Germany) and responsible for hanging their annual show in Spring 1933, which was targeted by the SA, Bloch was under threat. Having visited Denmark in the summer of 1933, the Bloch family left Berlin for Denmark in the following summer of 1934, but only nominally on holiday. En route to England, they stayed with the Danish writer Karin Michaelis (1872-1950), one of many Jewish and politically active families she welcomed on her property in Thurø.  Other refugees who stayed there with her that summer included playwright Bertholt Brecht (1898-1956), his actress wife Helene Weigel (1900-1971) and his friend the philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin (1892-1940).  In Denmark Bloch enjoyed the crisp northern light, painting views of the warehouses and harbour in Svendborg: 'Svenborg Harbour, Denmark' (1934) is in the Ben Uri Gallery. 

Bloch arrived in London in late August 1934 with his wife and daughter. Later that year he re-opened his art school, this time with the Australian painter Roy de Maistre (1894-1968) as the 'the School of Contemporary Painting and Drawing'.  De Maistre, who had moved to London in 1930, had in the same year exhibited both at the Beaux Arts Gallery, and in the studio belonging to Francis Bacon (1909-92). Just as he had appreciated Berlin's modern buildings, Bloch enjoyed the contrasts of pre-war London, for example painting the busy 'Busses in Victoria Station' in 1935 and the more tranquil 'Edwardes Square' in Kensington, where he had a studio, in 1937 and 1938. His major pre-war London painting, 'All Souls and the BBC, Langham Place' (1938) shows the BBC amongst the colourful London street furniture. Bloch's first major London exhibition was held at the Alex Reid and Lefevre Gallery in 1939.