The hidden, overlooked and undervalued: Andrew Lambirth’s spring roundup

Jankel Adler (1895–1949), a Polish Jew who arrived in Glasgow in 1941, was invalided out of the Polish army, and moved to London two years later. A distinguished artist in his own right, he turns out to have been a hidden presence on the English art scene, a secret influence on indigenous artists. He is usually cited as a crucial inspiration for Robert Colquhoun, but as his work grows more familiar, it becomes clear that a whole host of other artists must have been aware of him, from S.W. Hayter to Cecil Collins. Interestingly, the sculptors who were coming to maturity in the 1950s (just after Adler’s death) also seem to owe him a debt: the so-called ‘Geometry of Fear’ generation of Armitage, Butler and Chadwick, to which I’d add Robert Adams and George Fullard. Picasso is often named as the chief influence on Adler himself, but actually Klee emerges as the key inspiration, the two artists becoming friends in the 1930s at the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts.