Artist questionnaire

Description

J.P. Hodin's questionnaire completed by Jacob Bornfriend with details of his life and work.

[Translation/transcription]

I. LIFE AND WORK DATA

Full name:
Date and Place of Birth:
Art Schools visited:
Dates, Names of Teachers:
Jacob Bornfriend
Zborov, 25.10.1905
Academy of Plastic Arts Prague
Willi Novak, 1930-35

Advantages connected with education in art schools: influences on further work:
–

When started work in personal direction? Name works and dates:
?

Represented in public collections:
Name works and collections
National Gallery, Prague; Museum of Moravia, Slovakia; Museum Košice; Museum of Gothenburg; Museum Tel Aviv; Tate Gallery and Contemporary Art Society in London; St Clement’s College, Oxford; Southampton Art Gallery; Wakefield Museum; and Auckland Museum, New Zealand

Prizes, Scholarships, Awards
(First Prize at the Academy of Plastic Arts in Prague, 1930-31)

Are you holding a teaching job in an art school:
Name school and dates:
Monumental walls executed
Executed a mural (16 x 22 ft) at Jews’ College, Montague Place, London, in 1958


State whether mentioned in any book on art:
Name title of book, page, and illustration, if any
Who is Who in Art and a History of Jewish Art by E. Roditi

Date and places of journeys abroad:
Paris, Belgium and Hungary 1933; came to England 1939; France, Spain and Belgium between 1948 and 1956

Do you belong to a group? (name)

Exhibitions held:
In England and abroad
Roland Browse and Delbanco galleries


 
II. STYLISTIC DATA

(a) Describe briefly your own stylistic development, changes of style, themes, etc. State reason why and dates when occurred.
1930-33 Realistic works, 1933-37 Cubistic influence, 1937-39 Surrealistic influence (Max Ernst, Masson). Hardly any painting done in the war years, started again in 1948, since 1948 abstract lyrical leanings.

(b) State main sources of inspiration (in England and abroad). Names of artists and art trends, or other influences.
Bonnard, Braque, Picasso (Max Ernst) and the movement in lyrical and expressionist abstractionism. Motifs: figural compositions, still lifes, gardens and interiors.

(c) State when arrived at positive appreciation of ‘abstract’ principles of art and why you adopted them.
1. First in 1933 and again since 1937-38.
2. It gives more scope and freedom to the artist to express his ideas in his work.

(d) What is the chief aim of your work, seen
1) aesthetically
2) socially
To bring one’s traditional values in the new movement.
(Spiritual) excitement in one’s everyday life.

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