Sign from Ben Uri Art Gallery (1943)
Sign from Ben Uri Art Gallery (1943)
This label was used to identify the Wandering Jew relief by Theo Balden at the Ben Uri Art Gallery. His name and address in Derby, the title of the artwork and the price are shown on it. The gallery, which mainly represented artists of Jewish origin, was founded in 1915 by the Russian emigrant Lazar Berson in London. In the 1940s the exhibition rooms of the gallery were located in Portman Street in London.
Theo Balden's sculptures and drawings were regularly displayed in exhibitions in Derby and London. Theo Balden's work was shown in the Artists Aid Russia (1942), Artists aid Jewry of the Whitechapel Art Gallery (1943) and Sculpture in the Home (1945) exhibitions in London, as well as in Contemporary Art (1946) in Derby and in the Subjects of Jewish interest (1946/1947) exhibition at the Ben Uri Art Gallery in London. As a member of the Artist's International Association he also took part in the group exhibitions such as the Members' Exhibition in London in 1942. Shortly before his remigration in the winter of 1946/1947, 45 of Theo Balden's works which had been made in the United Kingdom were shown in a solo exhibition in Derby and in the City of Stoke-on-Trent Museum and Art Gallery, as well as in Nottingham.