Jussuf Abbo – re-constructing the life and work of a forgotten artist скачать в хорошем качестве

Jussuf Abbo – re-constructing the life and work of a forgotten artist

A talk by Dorothea Schöne about Jussuf, Abbo, a fascinating but still too little-known émigré artist, who died in London in 1953. Sculptor Joseph M. Abbo – who later renamed himself Jussuf Abbo – was born in 1890 in Safed, then part of the Ottoman Empire. Working as a labourer on an archeological site led by an architect, Hoffmann, on behalf of the German government, Abbo was noticed and rapidly promoted to the drawing-office and to stone-carving. Offered a scholarship at the Berlin School of Art, Abbo arrived in Germany in 1911 and began studying at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin in 1913. By 1919 he had a master studio in the Prussian Academy of Fine Arts. In the 1920s he exhibited in top galleries throughout Germany and had established himself as a well-known portrait sculptor and printmaker and active member of the Berlin avant-garde. Abbo was flamboyant and charismatic. Many of his wealthy and powerful patrons, clients and friends were Jewish. He was known for his bohemian and eccentric lifestyle, an exotic artist from the Orient, apparently living for some time in a Bedouin tent in his large Berlin studio. He was part of the group of friends of the Expressionist poet and playwright, Else Lasker-Schüler, whom he portrayed on several occasions and who in turn wrote a poem about him. With the Nazi takeover, Abbo was repeatedly branded - stateless after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, he was exposed by his Jewish ancestry to Nazi racial fanaticism; his girlfriend Ruth Schulz, moreover, was illegitimately pregnant by him. Under dramatic circumstances, the pair fled to England in 1935, where Abbo was unable to re-establish his career, despite hopeful beginnings. Famous curators, writers and critics did the best they could to help him, but to no avail. Jussuf Abbo died in his London exile in 1953. In her presentation, Berlin-based curator and art historian Dorothea Schöne introduces this multi-faceted, unjustly forgotten artist and his traumatic experience of flight and exile – in particular, shedding light on the networks and protagonists engaged in supporting the artist in London.