Jankel Adler

Jankel Adler (1895-1949)

Jankel Adler (1895–1949) was a Polish-Jewish avant-garde painter and printmaker whose career unfolded across Poland, Germany, France, and England. He became associated with modernist and progressive art circles in the interwar years, and after fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933, he continued working in exile in France and later Britain.

Bio
Born Jankiel Jakub Adler in Tuszyn near Łódź, he came from a large Orthodox Jewish family and began his artistic career as an engraver before studying art in Germany. In the Rhineland he became connected with progressive artistic networks, including the Cologne Progressives, and gained recognition in Düsseldorf, where he received commissions and awards in the 1920s. After the Nazi rise to power, Adler signed anti-fascist appeals, left Germany, and later had works included in the Nazi “Degenerate Art” campaign. During the Second World War he lived in Britain, where he developed an important late style and exhibited in London, Glasgow, Dublin, Paris, and New York.

Exhibition history
Adler’s exhibition history includes a 1935 monographic exhibition in Warsaw organized by the Warsaw Committee to Aid Exiles. His work was shown in the Nazi exhibition *Entartete Kunst* in Munich in 1937, reflecting the regime’s condemnation of his art. In Britain, his work was exhibited at the Annans’ Gallery in Glasgow in 1941, and later at major London galleries including Redfern, Reid & Lefevre, and Gimpel Fils; his work also appeared at Waddington in Dublin, Galerie de France in Paris, and Knoedler in New York. More recently, there was a major survey exhibition in Wuppertal in 2018 and a survey of his British years at Ben Uri Gallery and Museum in 2019.