Arthur Fleischmann (1896-1990): A New Life in the UK

The sculptor Arthur Fleischmann was born into a Jewish family in Bratislava. He studied medicine in Budapest and Prague and qualified as a medical doctor – where in parallel he started his sculpture studies under Professor Jan Štursa. Immediately after qualifying as a doctor, he turned his attention and energy fully to sculpture. He left Europe in the mid-1930s and, following periods living and working in Bali and Australia, returned to Europe in 1948, where he settled in London and began to establish himself. His work was championed by Sir Charles Wheeler, and despite cultural prejudices, he was elected a Fellow of the Society of British Sculptors.

In this talk Dominique Fleischmann will give an overview of his father’s career in London, his use of Perspex as a sculptural medium, and focus on public commissions for World Expos and the Festival of Britain. Among the latter were commissions for four sculptures at the Brussels World Exhibition in 1958 – two for the British Pavilion and two for the Vatican Pavilion. He and his young wife Joy spent a year on site in Brussels working to install the sculptures. The majority of his efforts were spent erecting the 40 foot high aluminium Resurrection.

Dominique Fleischmann, son of the sculptor, is a trustee of the Arthur Fleischmann Foundation and was instrumental both in setting up the Arthur Fleischmann Museum in Bratislava in 2002 and in publishing the book Bali in the 1930s: Photographs and Sculptures by Arthur Fleischmann in 2007. He has supported his mother Joy in the staging of numerous exhibitions and events since the death of Arthur Fleischmann in 1990. He has developed the Arthur Fleischmann Digital Archive that aims to provide a definitive catalogue of all Arthur Fleischmann sculptures, drawings, paintings and photographs around the world. In the last four years, he has digitized the thousands of letters and photographs in his father’s archive that were recently acquired by Tate.

Dominique will be joined by sculpture expert Joanna Barnes, who curated the exhibition ‘Arthur Fleischmann: a centennial celebration’ at the Mestke Múzeum in Bratislava in 1996 and helped establish the Arthur Fleischmann Museum there in 2002. A former trustee of the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association, Joanna was editor of its online magazine, 3rd Dimension and co-founder of the Sculpture Journal. Co-founder of The Public Statues and Sculpture Association (PSSA), she is currently its co-chair.

This talk forms part of the events programme – organised in partnership with Insiders/Outsiders – accompanying the Fred Kormis exhibition at the Wiener Holocaust Library, which runs until 6 February 2025.

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Image: Arthur Fleischmann, 1972. With kind permission of the Arthur Fleischmann Archive