Ivor Weiss: talented UK artist.

 The Waiting Room, 1964

The Discussion, 1968 

Spitalfields Life introduced Ivor Weiss (1919-86) who was born in Stepney in the East End of London near Cable St, son of Romanian Jewish immigrants who came from Bucharest. Ivor’s talent for draw­ing was apparent from an early age and en­couraged by his parents. 

His studies at the Northampton Rd Polytechnic London, were cut sh­ort by the outbreak of WW2. He ended up in the Royal Corps of Signals and was posted to the North African campaign in Egypt. He then spent most of the war with the Brit­ish 8th Army in Malta where he was all­owed to study at the Malta School of Art in Valetta. There his tal­ents were first recognised at a serious level. 

When demobbed in 1946, he enrolled at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art in Chelsea, where he gained a diploma in painting. It was his time there and its long tradition of figurative art that had the greatest imp­act on his art. And then St Martin’s School of Art in Charing Cross Rd, where he studied paint­ing and art history, like many other Eastern European artists. And he met his future wife, Joan Dare, also an art student and painter.

Ivor’s brother was a pilot in the RAF who had been seconded to Mont­gomery USA. After graduating in 1950, Ivor and Joan in­vited to Al­ab­ama to live. There they set up an art school called the Weiss Gall­ery. And he had 3 exh­ibitions in the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art. To supplement their income they undertook commissions from commerc­ial clients, creating large murals and mosaics. And two of the child­ren were born in US. Unfortunately the normal family practice of holding multi-racial classes was at odds with Alabama’s segregated society. But only by 1955 had they saved up enough money to return.

On returning home, Ivor Weiss designed glass windows for the Stock Ex­ch­ange in Johannesburg S.Africa and a large mosaic in Maid­st­one. Ivor was offered a locum art teacher position at Lanc­ing Coll­ege near Brighton for six months. Then he and his family decided to move to Brightlingsea Essex, a sea­side town where he taught art at the local high school. In 1958 they had their third child.

To supplement his income, he moved into teaching evening classes and into art dealing from the Brightlingsea home. By 1965 they’d made enough money to buy a big house in Colchester Essex. Ivor con­tinued as the art dealer, while Joan did the restoration. Weiss was a mem­b­er of Colchester Art Society in the 1950s and again later on.

In the 1960s Weiss’ mature work came to the attention of the prest­igious Mayfair Gallery in Carlos Place, near Lon­­don’s Conn­aught Hotel. There he exhibited several times, plus in Cambridge, Harlow and at Ben Uri Gallery London.

Four Drinkers, 1968

The Onlooker, 1968 

Stylistically Weiss’s paintings provide an evident love for the feel and texture of the paint itself . The black lines, which form a st­ructure to contain the paint, have soft contours softened by square brush strokes. Line and colour merge together with dramatic effects.

Note his most powerful works, of Jew­ish rituals and traditions, con­veying streng­th of faith. These works showed the importance of family and communal ties. They were characters who, alth­ough grouped in social acts like eating and drinking, often appear isolated. Their eyes disappeared into the black lines, a metaphor for avoidance of eye contact and distance. For a non-religious man, Weiss was prod­ucing an impressive body of works of orth­od­ox Jewish men at prayer eg he had a solo ex­hib­ition at the Colch­est­er Art Society called Rabbi and Ritual in 1971. More recently one of Ivor Weiss’ rabbinic paintings was hung Sandys Row Synag­ogue, Spitalfields.

Ivor was multi-talented: he taught pottery and made enamel jewell­ery, text­iles and fur­n­iture. His work was exhibited at the R.A and the White­chapel Gallery as well as inter­nat­ionally, and some pictures are in the collections of Cambridge Uni and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art. In the last decade of his life he became ins­pired by Judaic scenes probably influenced by Mark Gertler (1891-1939). 

A long struggle against cor­onary disease evoked memories of Ivor’s youth. These scenes expressed a need for an identity. And his trip­le bypass strengthened ever further his need to go back to his Judaic heritage and his East End child­hood. 

Ivor’s eldest son Mark took on the family business and Ivor was able to spend more time paint­ing both at home and on Italian holidays. How­ever in 1986 he died, at 67. His emotive paint­ings remained hang­ing in the family houses in storage with Joan, until she died at 92. Weiss Gallery was filled large bold paintings that possessed a tender hum­an­ity. These pictures embodied the cultural memory of the Jewish East End, speaking movingly of a good life and a great tal­ent.

Albemarle Gallery, in London's West End, organised a post­humous exhibition of his work in 2005, accompanied by a richly il­l­ustrated catalogue by Julian and Debra Weiss: Memories of a Jewish Artist.

Mark moved the Weiss Gallery to 59 Jermyn St, one of the last truly grand gallery spaces in London, where the Ivor Weiss show opened on Oct 2017. This Portrait of an Artist: Ivor Weiss Exhibition showed 31 works, many of them featuring Jewish symbols. 

I enjoyed reading Ivor Weiss: Memories of a Jewish Artist exhibition catalogue.

 Ivor Weiss rabbinal painting,

 donated to Sandys Row Synagogue. Dec 2017