Fred Kormis was an artist whose life and work were strongly shaped by war, exile and remembrance. He was born Fritz Isidor Kormis on 20 September 1894 in Frankfurt am Main, into a Jewish family with Austrian and German roots. He trained as a sculptor from a young age and studied at the art school in Frankfurt.
During the First World War, Kormis served in the Austrian army. He was wounded on the Eastern Front and taken prisoner by Russian troops. In a prisoner-of-war camp in Siberia he continued to draw and sculpt, mainly portraying his fellow prisoners, an experience that had a lasting influence on his themes.
After escaping and returning to Germany in 1920, Kormis resumed his work as an artist. In the years that followed, he established himself as a portrait sculptor and medallist and married Rachel Sender. His bronze portrait medallions were well received in European art circles. With the rise of National Socialism, his position as a Jewish artist became untenable. His work was labelled ‘degenerate’, and he and his wife left Germany. Via the Netherlands they settled in England in 1934, where Kormis started again, leaving much of his earlier work behind.
In London he slowly built a new life. During the Second World War his studio was destroyed in a bombing raid, but he kept working, including in ceramics and on smaller sculptures. His art remained focused on human experience in extreme circumstances. In the 1960s Kormis created a monumental group of figures in Gladstone Park, London, which is regarded as the first memorial in Britain to the victims of Nazi persecution and the concentration camps. The five figures do not depict specific scenes, but emotional states such as captivity, loss and hope.
Although he was relatively little known during his lifetime, his work has received renewed attention from museums and researchers in recent years. Fred Kormis died in London in 1986.
