Alfred Nussbaum

Born 16/08/1919 in Lvov, Poland.
Died 16/02/2004 in the UK.
20th Century Austrian Expressionist.

"Out of the ghost haunted mists of my childhood grew a desire to find out and a firm conviction that, with supreme but glorious effort, it would be possible to reach The Truth, and that conviction, nourished by legends and fairytales, stayed with me."

"My aim as a painter is to oppose what I consider the sterile, introspective modernism characterising contemporary painting, and to rise, as far as I may be able, to the challenge this age of disintegrating cultures poses to creative artists."

C.V.
He was born, schooled, tested
Accepted, rejected
Loved, hated
Celebrated, mocked
He searched the maps
They put before him
For a way.
For ways there must be,
But they proved deceitful
And made him doubt
All maps and those
Who make a living
By devising guides
Out of our miseries.
He ends by putting documentary evidence
In readiness
For his heirs
(Alfred Nussbaum, August 1996)
INFLUENCES:
Friedrich Nietzsche
Karl BarthSoren Kirkegaard
The Holocaust (family members died in Auschwitz and Dachau)
The New Testament
Socialism
Science and Mathematics

Education 1926 1937: Educated in Vienna, Austria1937: University of Vienna to study medicineHaving been forced to abandon a medical career and leave Austria in 1938, after its annexation by Germany, the war found Alfred as a stateless refugee in Palestine, where he stayed until 1948. 1948: Alfred arrived in the UK as a refugee.1948 1953: Rochester College of Art and West of England College of Art1954 1959: Teacher of Art at a Bristol Secondary School1959 1983: Teacher of Physics at a Bristol Secondary School, rising to Head of Department