Harry Weinberger

Harry Weinberger (1924–2009) was an artist based in England. He was 'a trenchant defender of traditional painting', who fought against the dominant art school conventions of his day. Primarily a painter with a love of colour, Weinberger also taught art and illustrated books. He rarely painted people. Weinberger preferred to paint interiors and objects within them. He never dated his work (which has posed problems for curators, historians and those concerned with sales of his art). Harry Weinberger died at the age 85 on 10 September 2009.

Biography

Harry Weinberger was born in Berlin on 7 April 1924, the son of a wealthy Jewish industrialist. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Weinberger's father moved the family from Germany to Czechoslovakia. Six years later on 20 July 1939, when Weinberger was 15, he and his sister Ina caught the last Kindertransport train to England, where he lived for the rest of his life. and street brawls. Before the move to Czechoslovakia, Weinberger remembered watching boats of all kinds on the River Spree from the balcony of his parents' house at Bundesratufer 7 – a subject which he often returned to in his work, which for him symbolised escape.

Art was around him from an early age. The Weinbergers collected art, and a Russian artist, Grisha Oscheroff who lived with the family, taught Harry to paint at an early age.

Weinberger's cousin, the artist Heinz Koppel (1919–1980), who was four years older than Harry, also lived in Berlin, moved to Czechoslovakia in 1933 and came to Britain in 1938. Koppel's connections were to prove useful in Weinberger's early career. Weinberger's older brother and two of his uncles were also already resident in England by then.

On arriving in England, Weinberger initially boarded at schools in Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire, then took a tool-making apprenticeship at a South Wales factory owned by one of his uncles, and studied engineering. During this time he also took private classes with the Welsh painter and print-maker, Ceri Richards (1903–1971).

After the war, Weinberger stated that he wanted to be able to paint in peace and quiet.

In 1951, Weinberger married Barbara Herrmann, an artist and later a social historian who had been his muse in Berlin. She was the daughter of the architectural historian Wolfgang Herrmann. They had one daughter, Joanna. Barbara died of cancer in 1996.

Career

On his return to England, Weinberger was awarded an ex-serviceman's grant and moved to London to study under his previous tutor, Ceri Richards, at Chelsea College of Art. He did not do well at Chelsea; his modern colourful, expressive work was unpopular with staff and colleagues, who had taken on a rather more muted palette so in the end he decided to take lessons from the émigré German artist Martin Bloch (1883–1954), who he greatly admired, and who also taught his cousin Heinz Koppel. Bloch was an affirmed expressionist painter who encouraged his students to study in the National Gallery.

Weinberger left Chelsea College of Art to join Goldsmiths School of Art. In 1950 he went to Brighton to train as a teacher. Weinberger taught art at schools in London and Reading, then at a teacher training college in Manchester in the early 1960s and later became Head of Painting at Lanchester Polytechnic

Weinberger worked incessantly in his studio, well in to his eighties. His paintings are charged with energy and atmosphere. Evidently some were quite quickly worked. Weinberger illustrated several books during his life and filled endless sketch books mainly using pencil crayons, particularly while travelling, which he loved to do.

In an exhibition catalogue for a show of Weinberger's work at the Herbert Art Gallery Coventry in 1983, Murdoch wrote:

Legacy

In 2014, Weinberger's work was exhibited in Iris Murdoch & Harry Weinberger: Writer Meets Painter at the Kingston Museum & Art Gallery, London.

A symposium, Perspectives on the Paintings of Harry Weinberger, was held at Kingston University, London in September 2014.

Work in public collections National Museum Wales My House in Wales

Government Art Collection In Berlin (Bundesratufer)

University of Sheffield Novgorod 2 Red River Avanos 2

Manchester Metropolitan University Studio 1

Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum Black Snow Inside/ Outside In Cornwall Still Life Me Wearing Venetian Mask

Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry Window at Kenilworth, Warwickshire Kenilworth, Warwickshire Nude

Ben Uri Gallery, London In Winter, Manchester

Selected exhibitions 1965: Harry Weinberger Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry 1971: Harry Weinberger, University of Sheffield 1973: Harry Weinberger, Kunstamt Neukölln, Rathaus-Galerie, Berlin (Part of the Berlin Festival, 1973) 1976: Roots and Influences: Jankel Adler, Hilde Goldschmidt, Harry Weinberger, Camden Arts Centre, London 1982: Atelier Europa, Karlsruhe, Germany (group show of work by fifteen European artists – Weinberger represented England) 1983: Harry Weinberger: Paintings and Drawings, Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry 1986: The Unbroken Line : 50 years of British drawing 1936–1986, Gillian Jason Gallery, London 1987: Harry Weinberger, Kunsthaus Schaller, Stuttgart 2004: Harry Weinberger: Retrospective, Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa 2014: Iris Murdoch & Harry Weinberger: Writer Meets Painter Kingston Museum & Art Gallery

Weinberger's work was exhibited regularly at Duncan Campbell Contemporary Art in London. Campbell was Weinberger's primary agent in the UK from . Weinberger held several one-man shows in Berlin and was invited to participate in many group shows in Germany.

Artists Lives recordings

In 1995, Cathy Courtney interviewed Weinberger for the Artists Lives oral history series, part of National Life Stories, an independent organisation based within the British Library, resulting in ten hours of recordings. This is the best resource on Weinberger's life. There are also many points of interest regarding to art history, social history and the Second World War.