Graphic artist, designer, painter and sculptor, Hugo 'Puck' Dachinger was born in Austria to Jewish middle-class parents. He studied at the Leipzig School of Arts and Crafts (1929-32), then worked as a graphic designer, moving in 1932 to Vienna, where he invented a system of moveable type (patented in 1933) and established workshops in Leipzig, Zagreb and Budapest. Taking refuge in London through business contacts, he co-founded the firm Transposter Advertising Ltd (1938-45). In June 1940, he was interned, firstly at Huyton, outside Liverpool and then in Mooragh Camp, at Ramsey, on the Isle of Man, where he continued to produce art and to participate in camp exhibitions. He notably designed a poster with a single dramatic barb of wire and a stylised eye to advertise his exhibition held in camp in November 1940, entitled Art Behind Barbed Wire. Following his release in January 1941, he reprised his internment exhibition at the Redfern Gallery in Cork Street, from 9-26 April 1941, supported by the Free Austrian Movement in Great Britain (FAM), an Austrian refugee organisation. He also exhibited at German émigré Jack Bilbo's Modern Art Gallery in 1942, and alongside fellow Austrian artists at the Leger Galleries, while continuing to work as an inventor and designer for various publishing companies. Dachinger's portrait (one of several that survive) of Hollitscher, a Viennese former engineer for the Danube Shipping Company and fellow internee at Huyton, was made with paints ground from foodstuffs and applied to a newspaper support (The Times was preferred), primed with flour and water, leaving news reports of the war tantalisingly visible beneath.
Interned Artists: Ben Uri and the 80th Anniversary of Internment
Forthcoming exhibition
