Roman Halter PV Invitation.indd 1 14/03/2014 16:04:39

Roman HalterLife and Art

through Stained GlassLearning Resource

Contents

1 Introduction to Exhibition

2 About Roman Halter

4 What is Stained Glass?

5 Through Stained Glass

7 Family, Craft and Tradition

8 Narrating the Holocaust

9 Supporting Teaching Resources

Introduction to Exhibition

Had circumstances been different, Roman Halter would be remembered today first and foremost for his art, which spanned nearly sixty years and various media: from architecture and design, to watercolour and oil, to stained glass and cast works in bronze and aluminium.

As it is, Halter is known best for devoting much of his adult life here in the UK to narrating the horrors he witnessed and endured as a survivor of the Holocaust (the Shoah). He made it his mission to ensure that the young were reminded of the genocides of the past, warning against complacency about the real and frightening potential for repetition.

This exhibition explores the work of Roman Halter with a particular focus on his Stained Glass works. The following resource will explore this exhibition including information about the practice of stained glass, a biography of the artist and some of the key themes and works that are explored in the exhibition.

Halter’s work in glass and paint is as much about the symbolic as the aesthetic qualities of light. After the darkness of Halters early life experiences it is profoundly important to celebrate the light, life and colour that he expressed during his later years.

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Roman Halter with cast bronze filigree, stained glass ark doors

About Roman Halter

1927 – Born 7 July in Chodecz, Poland, the youngest of seven children to Salome and Max Halter

1939 – Outbreak of the Second World War; Nazi Germany invades Poland; Halter is deported with some of his family to the Lodz Ghetto

1944 – Transported from Lodz to Auschwitz, then to Stutthof Concentration Camp (on the Baltic coast); four months later Halter is taken to Dresden as part of slave labour in a munitions factory where he experiences an epiphany before the city’s architecture

1945 – Survives the Allied bombing of Dresden; after Liberation, Halter is flown to Britain by the Central British Fund – forever a member of ‘The Boys’, a group of young Jewish survivors granted refuge in Britain

1950 – Meets wife to be, Hungarian refugee and international swimmer Susan Nador at the Maccabiah Games in Israel where they both represented Great Britain

1951 – Accepted as a student at The Architectural Association, London; attends evening classes in drawing and painting under David Bomberg at London’s Borough Polytechnic

1953 – Marries Susan Nador

1954 – Daughter Aloma is born

1956 – Son Ardyn is born

1958 – Qualifies as an architect

1964 – Daughter Aviva is born

1967 – Forms Roman Halter and Associates architectural practice, later to become RH Partnership with offices in London and Cambridge

1973-1975 – Moves to Israel with wife Susan and daughter Aviva; there he commits to painting his experiences of the Holocaust and is commissioned to design the main gate for Yad VaShem, the national Holocaust Remembrance Authority, Israel

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1975 – Studies stained glass practice at The Central School of Art and Design, London

1976 – Designs and makes stained glass windows for The Hall of Names, Yad VaShem, Jerusalem, Israel

1976 – Returns to UK, commissioned to make Royal Coats of Arms for many courts, embassies and consulates around the world as Designer and Maker of Armorials to Her Majesty the Queen; Halter designs stained glass windows for The Leo Baeck School synagogue, Haifa, Israel; exhibits at Ben Uri, Dean St, London

1977–2011 – Designs and installs, both individually and in collaboration with both Ardyn and Aviva, a large number of stained glass windows and memorials for synagogues and institutions across London throughout this period

1979 – Exhibits at Ben Uri, Dean St, London

1983 - 1986 – Produces Reclining Figure after some years of discussions with Henry Moore, freshly interpreting a watercolour design by the sculptor

2001 – One of two Shoah survivors to address the first UK National Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony, Central Hall, Westminster

2005 – Exhibits Holocaust paintings at Tate Britain; The Imperial War Museum acquires seven works, including those exhibited at Tate, for its permanent collection

2007 – Roman’s Journey, Halter’s autobiography edited by daughter Aloma Halter, is published and distributed in the UK, US and Germany

2008 – Exhibits with Aviva Halter-Hurn at The Redfern Gallery, London

2009 – Exhibits at The London Jewish Cultural Centre

2010-2011 – Designs, with Aviva Halter-Hurn, his last stained glass windows, for the ark of The New North London Synagogue, London, interpreting The Ten Commandments

2012 – Dies in London

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What is stained glass?Stained or coloured glass has been in production for over a thousand years. It was originally used exclusively for church windows or other significant buildings, but is now also used in fine art, design and domestic settings.

Stained glass is made by adding metallic salts to colourless glass during the manufacturing process. The glass is cut into smaller pieces, arranged in a pattern, or to form an image, and held together using strips of lead or other metals.

Patterns can vary from religious scenes to modern abstract arrangements, but the colours are generally very bright to ensure a jewel-like effect when the light shines through the glass.

Fruits and Flowers of the Bible1977-78The Central Synagogue, LondonStained glass and cast bronze filgree

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In 1975 Halter studied the practice of stained glass at The Central School of Art and Design in London. Following his successful completion of the gate at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem he was commissioned to design the stained glass windows for the Remembrance Authority’s Hall of Names (completed in 1976). Up to the year before he died, Halter designed and completed a large number of stained glass windows that can be seen in London and Israel.

Stained glass is a most demanding art form combining the rigours of architectural planning of space and light with an artistic sensitivity to the expressivity of pure colour. In the twentieth century only a handful of painters attempted to master the craft. In Britain, those who left their distinctive marks on the composition of stained glass windows include Alfred Wolmark, John Piper and Mark Chagall.

The principal distinguishing characteristic of Halter’s stained glass method was his treatment of the metallic tracery (the lines or ‘lead’ between the glass shapes). Whereas the lead strips of conventional stained glass windows are often plain and unvarying, Halter used cast and sometimes polished aluminium alloy that was much lighter and which he sculpted around the panes of coloured glass.

Through Stained Glass

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Studies for stained glass2003Gouache and acrylic on card

Cartoon for stained glass2003Gouache, acrylic and ink on mounted paper

Three windows at London’s Central Synagogue, near Portland Place, exploit the spiritual meaning of light to the full. The impressive Jacob Wrestling with the Angel was originally rejected for its daring modernity but now stands as an example of stained glass design taken to a near-abstract extreme.

Halter’s stained glass can also be seen at Mill Hill United Synagogue, Leo Baeck College at the Sternberg Centre, in north London and at The Liberal Synagogue, Elstree, in Hertfordshire.

This survey of Halter's work reveals his creative skill for turning the merely structural into the sculptural, a practice that integrates his work in glass and paint. Many of Halter’s paintings also exhibit a strong stained glass influence, such as the boldly ‘art deco’ Couple (1979).

Halter developed an unique style in stained glass work which, as fellow practitioner and historian Caroline Swash observes, has ‘added depth and meaning […]’ to this most exacting of art forms, forcing, like its best counterparts, ‘fresh ways of seeing and new ways of working.’

At the North Western Reform Synagogue at Alyth Gardens in northwest London, Halter used this method with irrepressible results. The eighteen windows, depicting the theme of Chai or life, teem with lush vegetation and animals of land and sea alloyed in sculptural filigree.

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Studies for stained glass2003Gouache and acrylic on card

Family, Craft and Tradition

Some of the works are bright and optimistic, demonstrating the artist’s insatiable appetite for life, but others are ‘stained’ with recollections of the past. In particular, the artist’s grandparents are frequent subjects. The somber Zchor or memorial commemorates the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust in polished aluminum and rich, turquoise-coloured glass.

Each of the six candles represents one of the six million Jews who died during the Holocaust. The symbolic essence of this artist, who, after witnessing such darkness in his childhood, devoted himself to the design of stained glass, is, in the words of The National Gallery’s Colin Wiggins, ‘quite simply about light’.

The Halter family collaborated on several art works: with daughter Aviva Halter-Hurn at the Room of Prayer in Leo Baeck College, a rabbinical seminary (1985 -1986), and at The New North London Synagogue (2010 - 2011), both at London’s Sternberg Centre; and with son Ardyn at Yad LaYeled, The Ghetto Fighters’ Museum in Israel (1988 – 1994), a memorial to the one million six hundred thousand Jewish children murdered during the Shoah. Daughter Aloma edited the artist’s memoir Roman’s Journey (published 2007).

Halter depicted family and images of Jewish tradition in paint, print and glass. Both were constant sources of strength to Halter. The artist’s portrayal of these themes illustrates his enduring triumph of hope over the darkness of what he experienced during his youth.

Halter met his wife Susan Nador in 1950 while competing in the Maccabiah Games in Israel, he in waterpolo, she in swimming, both for Great Britain. Susan had competed on the Hungarian team in the 1948 London Olympic Games. Swimming remained a life-affirming passion for both and Susan continues to this day to amass awards in the sport.

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After the outbreak of the war in 1939 and Germany’s invasion of Poland, Halter, aged 12, was deported to the Lodz Ghetto, the second largest ghetto in the occupied country after Warsaw. At Lodz, Halter’s grandfather, a constant companion and special friend of his childhood, perished. Halter promised to him that when (not if) he survived, he would tell to others the undiluted facts of the Holocaust. A stark but affectionate portrait of the artist’s Grandfather (1974) pays tribute to this promise.

The relatively late dates of many of the other works attest to the artist’s delayed response to the atrocities he witnessed in his youth. This long time lapse between experiencing and publicly reliving is a well-recorded phenomenon within the survivor community. In other words, when people have lived through traumatic experiences, it can sometimes take a long time for them to be able to speak about or communicate through any means, what has happened. Often art can be a way for people to share experiences that have been traumatic.

In 2000, after surgery, Halter’s sleep patterns changed and he began to remember his dreams – and his nightmares. Using continuous, condensed watercolours, Halter documented his dreams of the Dorset countryside – the home county of his daughter Aviva Halter-Hurn – as it was violently intruded upon by nightmarish recollections of his childhood in occupied Chodecz. Many are inscribed with words by Halter, demonstrating the artist’s need and ability to narrate.

Some of the works in the exhibition represent Halter’s experiences of the Holocaust. The dark forms of a set of four gouaches (1996-1967) represent some of Halter’s most introspective work. Another set of four, Day of Liberation (2005-2006), are undisguised testimony of concentration camp horror set behind barbed wire – a motif Halter also used in his stained glass designs.

Narrating the Holocaust

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Grandfather1974Acrylic on canvas

Day of Liberation 1-42005-6Oil, acrylic and injected silicon gel on cotton canvas

Holocaust Educationhttp://www.theholocaustexplained.org/

Holocaust Education Through Visual Art and the Ben Uri Collectionhttp://benuriholocaust.lgfl.org.uk/

Roman Halterhttps://www.truetube.co.uk/film/window-past

Holocaust survivor Roman Halter speaks about his experience during the Shoah and his thoughts on Jewish life.

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cay42dVP2Mw

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhAmNZCFICQ

Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MImqR8Ux9g

Supporting Resources for Further Learning

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Jacob Wrestling with the Angel1977-78The Central Synagogue, LondonStained glass and cast bronze filigree