Jacob Kramer - Woodcuts, Drawings, & Paintings (1914-1927)
Forgotten Prints #2
Jacob Kramer (1892-1962) was a Ukrainian-Jewish painter and artist, based in England; “Born at Klincy, a small agricultural village in the Ukraine, in 1892. Both his father and uncle were well-known painters, and his mother was a Russian operatic artist. In 1900 his parents came to England and settled in Leeds, where Jacob studied at the Leeds School of Art, winning the junior scholarship in 1908 and the senior in 1911. The following year the Education Aid Society sent him to study at the Slade School. His first picture, ‘Mother and Child’, was exhibited at the New English Art Club in 1914; and since then he has exhibited regularly at the London Group, the Allied Artists' Association, and at the Glasgow Society of Artists and Sculptors. In March, 1920, his works, ‘Pogroms’ and ‘The Day of Atonement’ [see the full colour version here], were presented to the Leeds City Art Gallery by the Jewish community of that city.” (Charles Marriot, Modern Movements in Painting, 1920)
How shall we mourn you who are killed and wasted, Sure that you would not die with your work unended As if the iron scythe in the grass stops for a flower. —Charles Reznikoff (1918)
“Kramer had strong links with the Vorticists (although by 1922 this short-lived movement had ceased to exist) and also identified with Cubism which, he wrote, ‘succeeds in conveying the idea of a dynamic force’.” (Leeds Mercury, 1928; see Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, 2018)
Wyndham Lewis: “Jacob Kramer shows us a new planet risen on our horizon… It is still rather molten, and all sorts of objects and schools are in it's melting-pot. It has fine passages of colour, and many possibilities as a future luminary. Several yellows and reds alone, and some of its more homogenous inhabitants, would make a fine painting. I have seen another thing of his that confirms me in this belief.” (Blast No. 2, 1915)
Forgotten Poets Presents
Forgotten Prints: a free, living gallery of obscure and out-of-circulation prints and pictures, lovingly restored from late-1800s and early-1900s magazines and arts journals. Please feel welcome to freely share/remix the restored images, in non-commercial settings (make sure to send us a link if you do!). If you would like to use one of our restored images in a commercial project or publication, please get in touch—we can definitely sort something out!
