Ben Uri Collection

Flame of Remembrance

Artist information

Name Nina Grey (1907-)

Other name Janina Gruenberg

Born Lvov, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine)

Find more work in the collection by this artist

Nina Grey was born Janina Gruenberg into a Jewish family in Lvov, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine) in 1907. The city had a large Jewish community and a long history of conflict from sieges by the Cossack forces in 1648, to battles with Russia and Austria. In 1915, during the First World War, at the age of eight, Grey fled with her family to Vienna in Austria-Hungary (now Austria), where she grew up. She attended the College for Jewish Teachers and embarked on a teaching career in the 1920s prior to her marriage. In 1939, following the outbreak of war in Europe and the threat of Nazi persecution, she was forced to flee for the second time, moving with her husband to England and settling in London.

After the war, having always had 'the desire to model' (Ben Uri exhibition catalogue, 1962), she had the opportunity in 1952 to study sculpture, firstly, at the Hornsey, and then at St Martin’s School of Art in London. In 1958 her work was exhibited in London at the Royal Academy and picked out for mention by the 'Jewish Chronicle', and in 1959 she showed at the A.I.A. (Artists' International Association) Gallery in Lisle Street, Soho. Her first solo exhibition, comprising 19 sculptures in media including bronze, ciment fondu and plastic metal on plaster was at Ben Uri Gallery in 1962, and she also had a solo exhibition at Foyles Art Gallery in 1963. Her work was mainly figurative and included single, double and group figures, as well as portrait heads and busts, and some experimental works. She also made works specifically referencing the Holocaust including a terracotta plaque of a Nazi soldier wearing a swastika armband, and armed with a gun, in front of a line of men, women and children, and the symbolic 'Flames of Remembrance' (1961), made in plaster, which she also cast in bronze and presented to Yad Vashem World Holocaust Museum in Israel. She presented works to the Ben Uri Collection in 1992 and 1994 and her work was included in Ben Uri Picture Fairs in 1993 and 1996. She also painted, exhibiting with the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours Galleries.

Object Details

Date 1961

Object type sculpture

Medium plaster

Materials and techniques plaster (medium)

Dimensions H: 86 cm

Acquisition presented by the artist 1992

Accession number 1992-2

Display status not on display

Created in England some 22 years after the artist fled Nazi persecution in Austria on the eve of the Second World War, Nina Grey’s sculpture depicting 44 Flames of Remembrance, was made as a memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Modelled in the shape of a single flame, it comprises multiple heads of men, women and children, gradually decreasing in size towards the top; their heads are angled at different orientations, but most face outwards and are slightly downturned, mainly with eyes closed.

The image of the eternal flame, common to many cultures, signifies generations past. It is a particularly significant emblem in Jewish religious observance, in the form of the ‘ner tamid’ (Hebrew: 'eternal light') lamp that burns perpetually before or near the ark of the Law. It is also a terrible reminder of the concentration camp chimneys. By carving discernible features into the faces and including details such as the men’s kippahs (skull caps), women’s headdresses, and variant lengths and styles of hair, the artist affords each face an individual identity, evoking multiple narratives.

Another version of this work was exhibited at St Martin's School of Art in 1961, where Grey had been a pupil, before being cast in bronze and sent to the Yad Vashem art collection in Israel.

Selected exhibition history

1962
Nina Grey
Ben Uri Art Gallery


2016
Art and the Holocaust
Ben Uri Gallery


Literature

Nina Grey, Ben Uri Gallery, 1962 (exhibition catalogue); Walter Schwab and Julia Weiner, eds., Jewish Artists: the Ben Uri Collection - Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Sculpture (London: Ben Uri Art Society in association with Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, 1994), p. 125.

Flame of Remembrance by Nina Grey

Hover mouse cursor over image to zoom (you can also use the mouse wheel).

×
Flame of Remembrance by Nina Grey

View bigger image


To license this image contact Bridgeman images

© Nina Grey

Related works

A Flame
by Samuel Bak