Established in 1946 by the charismatic Jewish gallerist and world art collector William Ohly, the Abbey became a centre where a collection of artistic outsiders, including British painters and Commonwealth refugees, lived, worked and ate together, in the style of a commune. Being in such close quarters meant numerous fascinating collaborations continued throughout the 1940s and 1950s, facilitating work that was the result of a unique cocktail of influences.
Reporting on the venue in 1952, a commentator on the newsreel company British Pathé opined, in a perfect plummy voice, that the artists were there to find “above all else, peace and freedom of expression in the security of England”. The set-up was kibbutz-style, with residents sharing meals together, modelling for each other and working in support of each other. “The achievement for each one of them, is the reward for them all,” declared the Pathé commentator.
This cosy, domestic set-up was a world away from what we usually associate with art fraternities. While the contemporaneous Colony Room Club, established in Soho in 1948 by German-Jewish model and muse Muriel Belcher, was known for “raising hell” with its hard-drinking culture and artists such as Bacon, Auerbach and Freud mixing with, “tailors, sailors, barrow boys and thieves”, the Abbey was more relaxed and less urban, somewhere married Jewish artists could live and work alongside each other and even raise families.
British-born Ohly was the ideal anchor of the group. He owned the Berkeley Galleries in Davies Street, Mayfair, which gave the Abbey residents crucial exposure.
An old map of the Abbey site[Missing Credit]
“When Ohly bought the galleries in Mayfair, commercial properties were going cheap, as most owners were all leaving the bombed-out West End. These galleries gave the artists an instant audience, in the heart of London and he made prolific use of it,” explains Sarah MacDougall, one of the four co-curators.
“He was a humanist, anti-fascist who had seen the turbulence in Europe and was committed to salvaging what he could. Britain was considered quite insular in the art world at the time and many of the artists would have had difficulty adapting to an artist’s life here without him,” she says.
For the Jewish residents, such as Margret Kroch-Frishman, the centre was both a refuge and a vital opportunity to flourish although, like her peers, her work was still undoubtedly shaped by the artistic and geographical patina of her birthplace.
She was born into a German-Jewish middle-class family and moved to Berlin, against her family’s wishes, to study printmaking. It was difficult for a woman to pursue an artistic career without family support and she sought to do this by working as a circus trapeze artist. Her connections grew when she married fellow artist Marcel Frishman, and began contributing illustrations to popular satirical magazines.
Following Hitler’s rise to power and the ensuing war, the couple’s quest for freedom increasingly turned into a macabre game of cat and mouse. After spells in Brussels and Toulouse, they eventually made it to Australia, which saved their lives. Now the parents to one child, they came to live in the Abbey in 1951, probably through contact with Ohly, who had also spent some years in Australia.
She continued to produce lithographs and etchings and had an exhibition at Ben Uri almost immediately, which was very well received. In the post-war era, the soft power of showcasing British creativity and values was very much the domain of institutions such as the Government Art Collection, which procured works to be shown to international visitors and diplomats in government spaces. Works by artists like Frishman were often scooped up, as not only were they going for a good price they illustrated that Britain was becoming more “continental” in the new, liberated world.
While the Abbey was a cradle for emerging artists, many of its Jewish residents were, like the Frishmans, already approaching mid-life when they settled there and had enjoyed significant success before they were made refugees. Some had already collaborated with each other in their birth countries and the Abbey provided a place to continue artistic partnerships that would not have otherwise survived.
Helen Grunwald and Angela Varja were one such duo, having been childhood friends and students together in Vienna, before they reached the centre. Having been forced out of prestigious art schools in the 1930s, both women managed to find British patrons in London and rekindle their careers.
Helen Grunwald's East End Scene (Credit: Ben Uri gallery)[Missing Credit]
Grunwald and Varga had a love of social-realism painting and their sketchbooks and oil paintings show scenes of London markets such as Billingsgate, Covent Garden and Portobello. Despite the austerity around them, their vivid drawings convey how exciting it would have been to discover their newly adopted city in freedom and they portray it with affection and sensitivity. Both women found a patron in Sir Kenneth Clark, at the time one of the UK’s most powerful art historians and later director of the National Gallery.
After visiting the Abbey at Grunwald’s request to see Varga’s work, he agreed to be a patron of sorts and provide Angela with a much-needed reference for the Slade School of Fine Art. He wrote to Grunwald: “It must be lovely for you to find talent so akin to your own, although there are differences in the work, the vision and sympathies are very much the same.”
Varga was one of the very few residents to return to Austria in the 1950s and had a successful career, exhibiting across Europe and receiving many national awards. Grunwald devoted herself to teaching and was head of art at Maida Vale School for many years. While her life wasn’t as salubrious as some of her fellow artists, now that social realism is in favour again, prices for her work are rising. And there is no doubt that her time at the Abbey both shaped her professional life and provided essential security. She remained a resident there, with her mother who had fled Europe with her, until the late Sixties.
Jewish sculptor Inge King found refuge with her artist husband at the centre, having come to England on a domestic worker visa following Kristallnacht. Possibly at the behest of Ohly, Inge found patronage through the Jewish businessman Moray Glasner who supported her to renew her studies at the Glasgow School of Art and gave her her first commission.
Inge King's Untitled[Missing Credit]
Her early figurative work, mainly of the female form, is mesmerising and recalls Matisse, but later on, and likely inspired by her contact with Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, she moved into abstract sculpture. Her move to Australia in the 1950s propelled her artistic career further still and she went on to become one of Australia’s most important abstract sculptors.
While the centre provided a platform for artistic collaborations, it was equally crucial in terms of securing the financial support for the artists.
Film-maker Reiniger came to live at the centre with her artist husband Carl Koch. Both refugees from Potsdam, in Germany, by the time she arrived in the UK, Reiniger was already a pioneer in film animation techniques, mostly using her signature, exquisite silhouette artwork. The German film industry in the 1920s was as large in scope and prestige as Hollywood and Reiniger had already participated creatively in films with established directors.
It is now widely recognised that despite Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs being heralded as the first animated feature film to be made in colour in 1937, Reiniger achieved this a decade earlier with The Adventures of Prince Achmed, a retelling of The Arabian Nights, in 1926. She had invented the early version of the multiplane camera, to create a three-dimensional depth to animations, which Disney later studied and patented.
Through the centre, Reiniger, who was not Jewish, was able to continue to develop these techniques and to collaborate with the same Jewish film producers she worked with in Germany.
With her associate from Berlin, producer and financier Louis Hagen Junior, Reiniger went on to make 40 more films, mostly for children, including the first animations of the much-loved Dr Dolittle stories.
Incredibly the dynamic, artistic legacy of the Abbey continues to this day, having undergone a recent building regeneration to provide affordable living and working spaces for contemporary artists.
Rather poetically, it is run now by Louis Figgis, the grandson of its founder, Ohly, with the aim of keeping the ethos of artists, from all backgrounds, living and working together, showing that stories of migration and creativity change shape, but never really end.
“There has been a significant investment of time and money with each change of generation,” explains Figgis, “but it is our ambition that the centre can remain financially self-supporting to secure its long-term future for the next generation of artists, with facilities appropriate for the 21st century, while retaining the secluded nature of the site.
“We are very much a hidden oasis in suburban north London, still offering a sanctuary for artists, as William set out to achieve 80 years ago.”
The Abbey Art Centre as Postwar Refuge: 1946-1956 is at Ben Uri Art Gallery until December 18, 2026
www. benuri.org
The Abbey Art Centre, in New Barnet, London[Missing Credit]