Annely Juda; doyenne of British art dealers
Hyfler/Rosner
Norbert Lynton
17 August 2006
Annely Juda
Influential gallerist and art dealer
First at the Molton Gallery, then the Hamilton Gallery, and
from 1967 at Annely Juda Fine Art, Annely Juda's exhibitions
changed our understanding of 20th-century art and its
driving priorities.
Until the 1950s, Gertrude Stein's statement that in the 19th
century, modern art was made in Paris by Frenchmen and in
the 20th in Paris by Spaniards did not seem far off the
mark. New York's challenge, in the late 1950s, made the art
world seem bipolar. In the 1960s Britain responded by
asserting herself as a third contender with solid
achievements to throw into the ring. But it was still a
narrow world.
Harry Fischer at Marlborough Fine Art had introduced Britain
to the major Expressionists of the Brücke and the Blaue
Reiter sorts, and also to Oskar Kokoschka, the Viennese
Expressionist. Annely Juda made it her business to open our
eyes and minds to a complementary range of Modernism, mostly
Russian, or the geometrical abstract art of Holland and
Central Europe, and in her quiet but insistent way succeeded
in refocusing our attention. She also displayed and
supported contemporary British and foreign artists, some of
whom were, or soon became, major figures of the art world.
She was born Anneliese Brauer in 1914 into a solid Jewish
middle-class family in Kassel, Germany. Her father was a
laboratory chemist, her mother a trained fashion designer
whose ambition it was to be a painter. Brought up in the
spirit and practices of liberal Judaism, Annely and her
younger sister joined their parents in enjoying museums,
music and the theatre, books and newspapers. Annely enjoyed
sports (she was still ski-ing in her late eighties) and went
to art lessons outside her school.
Anti-Semitism reared its head suddenly, in 1932-33: Annely
was not allowed to go to university; her father's laboratory
was taken over, his library was confiscated. He fled to
Palestine, where he established a chemical factory. Annely,
her mother and sister followed him, but Annely found life in
Palestine too limited and confrontational.
In 1937 she moved to London where she met Paul Juda, who
became her husband in 1939. With his help, her parents came
to London shortly before the war. Paul and Annely had three
children, two daughters, Carol and Susan, and, in between
them, David, born in 1946, a "Victory baby", she said. The
Judas went back to Germany shortly after the war where Paul
wanted to work in his family's property business. In the
event, Annely did not feel at home in Germany and, for other
reasons too, left her husband, returning to London with her
three children in 1956.
Here she worked for the collector and gallery owner Eric
Estorick. He was to sack her, but this experience of the art
world persuaded her that she should spend her life
contributing to it, first at the Molton Gallery, in South
Molton Street, which she founded in 1960, and then in the
Hamilton Gallery opened in St George Street in 1963. Already
she was showing important avant-garde British artists in
those galleries, among them key figures associated with the
Situation exhibitions of 1960 and 1961, including William
Turnbull, Robyn Denny, Bernard Cohen and Gillian Ayres. Soon
she enrolled also foreign artists working in London, such as
Avinash Chandra and, from Australia, Klaus Friedeberger.
Annely Juda Fine Art opened in 1967 in Tottenham Mews, off
Charlotte Street, occupying two floors of an un-smart but
curiously apt industrial building. Her displays were marked
by quantity, backed by informative catalogues. She had
worked for Estorick in Berlin and had formed contacts in the
modern art world of Central Europe.
Her first exhibitions in the new gallery ranged widely over
European and British art, but in 1970 she declared her hand
with the first of a series of "The Non-Objective World"
shows. The title was that of the 1927 Bauhaus book
presenting Kasimir Malevich's work and ideas; her project
was to promote non-Parisian Modernism and diminish British
fears of abstraction. Those shows were dominated by
geometrical abstract painting of the De Stijl movement
(Mondrian, van Doesburg and their allies), abstract art in
two and in three dimensions of Russian Modernism (Malevich,
Tatlin, Popova, Gabo, Lissitzky etc.), but had room also for
more contemporary practioners such as Max Bill and Kenneth
and Mary Martin.
In 1986 she presented an amazing exhibition subtitled "The
Janus Face of the Twenties". This brought together movements
normally seen as contradictory, Dada and Constructivism, and
proved their close kinship. Tatlin originals being rare
anywhere, she encouraged the young Martyn Chalk to make
highly professional replicas of his famous but mostly lost
sculptures of 1914 and after.
All this made Annely Juda Fine Art a powerful addition to
the London art scene. For a few years in the early 1980s she
joined forces with Alex Gregory-Hood of the Rowan Gallery,
forming the Juda Rowan Gallery and adding his array of young
British painters and sculptors, among them Phillip King and
William Tucker, the sculptors, and Paul Huxley and Bridget
Riley among the painters.
American artists were seen there too, notably Al Held.
Christo, the great wrapper of natural sites and pompous
buildings, showed with her repeatedly. Two of Britain's most
brilliant sculptors joined the Juda stable, David Nash in
1986 and Anthony Caro in 1989. More recently, she widened
her gallery's range by adding David Hockney, her one
essentially figurative artist. Her interest in modern
Japanese art has been strengthened by her son David Juda's
developing connections with it, which included his marriage
to the painter Yuko Shiraishi.
As a critic, and then also as a relatively mute art
consumer, I always enjoyed meeting Annely Juda in her
successive galleries and sometimes at art events elsewhere.
She combined firmness of purpose and wide knowledge with
gentle ways. She had views on art and artists without
imposing them on anyone; in return she enjoyed honest
responses to her enquiries. She never flattered, but offered
a warm greeting and respect. Artists who have worked with
her emphasise her clarity and decisiveness, as well as her
kindness.
Moving the gallery (in 1990) to newly developed premises,
high up in Dering Street, gave it a more obviously
top-of-the-market character, with its contrasting spaces and
that great glass roof which opens to admit large sculptures
with the help of a crane. David Juda has been Annely's
lieutenant and partner in recent years, and inconspicuously
took charge of the business when his mother's health forced
her to retire from it. He has evidently inherited many of
her qualities; the gallery is in very good hands.
Anneliese Brauer, gallerist and art dealer: born Kassel,
Germany 23 September 1914; Director, Molton Gallery 1960-63;
Director, Hamilton Gallery 1963-67; Director, Annely Juda
Fine Art 1967-2006; CBE 1998; married 1939 Paul Juda
(deceased; one son, two daughters; marriage dissolved 1955);
died London 13 August 2006.