© Paul Hamann estate

The German émigré sculptor Paul Hamann trained at the Hamburg Landeskunstschule, then, briefly in Paris, under Rodin, before serving in the German army during the First World War. Afterwards, he taught in Hamburg, where he met the painter Hilde Guttmann (1898-1987), who became his wife. Specialising in the female nude, in sculpture and wood carving, Hamann co founded the Hamburg Secession and was President of the Kunstlerfest. The couple lived in artists' colonies in Worpswede and Berlin, prior to moving in 1933 to Paris, where Hamann's new painless process for sculpting life masks brought him an international celebrity clientele, including Bertolt Brecht, Cocteau, Gide, Man Ray and Harold Nicolson - who assisted their passage to England in 1936 (Hilde was Jewish, Paul 'part-Jewish'). In London, the Hamanns were founder members of the refugee organisation, the Free German League of Culture; Hamann co-chaired its Fine Arts section and exhibited in the Twentieth Century German Art exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries in 1938 and at the Wertheim Galleries the following year. Between 1940-41 he was interned at Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man (transiting briefly through Warth Mills), alongside Fred Uhlman and Erich Kahn, among others. In camp he was a signatory to the famous New Statesman letter, sat for his portrait to Kurt Schwitters (the most renowned portraitist in Hutchinson), taught modelling (sculpting his famous Nude Lady Golfer and a clay head of pianist Marian Rawicz), exhibited in both the first and second Exhibitions of Art and contributed to The Camp magazine. Post-war, he remained a major figure in the émigré network, exhibiting with the AIA (Artists Aid Jewry, 1943; For Liberty, 1943), running an art school with Hilde in St. John's Wood - attended by former internees including Hugo Dachinger, who sketched the class - and from where this life-drawing, from a larger tranche, has survived. He was also a member of the Hampstead Arts Council.