Biography
Born in 1891, Bernard Meninsky was central to the great generation of 20th century Anglo-Jewish artists which included Bomberg, Gertler, Kramer and Rosenberg, but remains perhaps the least known today. Major critical appreciation eluded Meninsky during his lifetime - despite the power of his dark, atmospheric landscapes of the 1920's and 30's, the tenderness of his "mother and child" series and the magic of the visionary, pastoral world of his later years.

Meninsky exhibited regularly with The London Group from 1913 and the New English Art Club from 1914. He held many solo exhibitions and took part in mixed shows with The Mayor Gallery, London; St. George's Gallery, London; The Zwemmer Gallery, London; The Leger Gallery, London; Adams Gallery, London; Boydells Gallery, Liverpool; Tib Lane Gallery, Manchester; Archer Gallery, London and more latterly The Belgrave Gallery and Blond Fine Art, London.

In 1951 The Arts Council staged a Memorial Exhibition of Meninsky's work at the New Burlington Galleries, London and 'The Picnic' (featured on this website) was included in the Arts Council touring exhibition 'British Romantic Painting of the Twentieth Century' in 1953.

As John Russell Taylor, art critic of The Times, shows in this first significant study of his life and art, Meninsky has always defied easy classification. Meninsky has latterly been dubbed a Neo-Romantic, and significantly his work was well represented in the Barbican exhibition A Paradise Lost. And yet even this convenient tag tells only part of the story. The flow and sculptural solidity of his draughtsmanship - and even more the monumentality of his figures in landscape - have more in common with the spirit of Picasso than with the contorted lines of the English Neo-Romantics proper.

Much of Meninsky's life was devoted to teaching, but as a man he was shy, retiring and neurotic. He was a man of many secrets, who finally took his own life at the age of 58. In spite of all this, he had a blazing talent, resolving the torments of his life into an art of elegiac grace and rare visionary power. He was an early friend of Bomberg, Gertler and Epstein, and was praised and recommended by Sickert. He worked with Gordon Craig and was collected by Ivor Novello, and during the Second World War he lived in the Oxford of Tolkein, C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams. He went through a complete mental breakdown and came out the other side, his art strengthened and deepened.

Examples of his work can be found in numerous prestigious public and private collections throughout the world, including the Tate Gallery, London; The National Portrait Gallery, London; The Imperials War Museum, London, Ben Uri Gallery, London, The City of Manchester Art Gallery; Sheffield Art gallery; The Ashmoleum Museum, Oxford; Leicestershire Museums & Art Galleries; The Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry; Hove Museum of Art; The Cooper Gallery, Barnsley; and Wakefield Art Gallery amongst others.