Interned Artists: Ben Uri and the 80th Anniversary of Internment

Lom's sketch of what a first glance seems to be an ordinary suburban street scene, in fact references the artist's internment in early summer 1940 in Huyton Camp outside Liverpool, located within the recently built but empty Woolfall housing estate. Despite its guarded barbed wire perimeter - the wire became an enduring symbol of oppression for many of the internees - Lom described Huyton as a place where 'every corner of the camp is a potential picture' in his rather sanitised and deliberately positive autobiographical account of internment, entitled Never Mind, Mr. Lom. Published by Macmillan in 1941, the title referred, apparently, to the cheery parting given by his charlady as he was led away. Having trained as an artist in Kassel, Weimar and Berlin, 'Lom' worked as a painter and a commercial artist in Germany, showing with the prestigious Neumann Gallery in Berlin in 1919, before the rise of Hitler led to his migration to England in 1933. He continued his career in London as a painter, window dresser and graphic designer, showing in various group exhibitions at Ben Uri from 1944 onwards and receiving particular support from Ben Uri's influential treasurer, Cyril J. Ross, who provided studio space for Lom and employed him in his West End store, Swears and Wells. Ross also donated a significant tranche of the artist's work posthumously to Ben Uri. These works on paper deftly demonstrate Lom's graphic skill, ranging from striking modernist compositions and figure studies to more traditional still- lives and landscapes. Lom's later career was curtailed by the onset of Parkinson's disease. Ben Uri held a Memorial Exhibition for Lom in its Portman Street townhouse during June-July 1954, which was opened by Ross.