MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review The Stranger, Undertone, and Outcome
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The medium was his message
MICHAL BONCZA recommends an exhibition of George Him's designs, revealing his pioneering use of colour and modernist techniques in visual communication
George Him's work
WILL STONE applauds the anniversary tour of Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches by Madchester icons, Shaun and Bez
JAN WOOLF invigilates images that meditate on Palestine, and the people who witness them
A murderous convention of crime writers, a hymn to nursing, a monster hunt, and robber baron capitalism
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a three-hander that broaches big themes, but doesn’t transcend dry academia
DAN GLAZEBROOK eavesdrops on the bourgeois intelligentsia and the stories it tells itself at this moment of crisis
WHEN Jerzy Himmelfarb came to Britain in 1937 from Lodz in Poland, he and his partner, the artist, designer and illustrator Jan Le Witt, had a portfolio significant enough to be invited to exhibit by publishers Lund Humphries and have the V&A ask for samples of their work.
There and then, they decided to relocate to England to further their careers and Himmelfarb anglicised and shortened his name to Him, sacrificing in the process the poetry of the family surname which in Yiddish means “colour of the sky.” Jerzy is just plain George in Polish.
With his resettlement, Him brought with him the avant-garde, modernist aesthetics of central Europe to Britain, which this delightful retrospective of Him’s seminal work engagingly catalogues.
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