Samson
Painter and illustrator Walter Herz was born into a Jewish family in Czechoslovakia in 1909 and trained and practised as a lawyer prior to the rise of National Socialism, immigrating to England and settling in London in 1939. During the war his work included a painting of London in the Blitz (private collection). After the war, he started a commercial art studio with Victor Ross, working on leaflets and fundraising material for Zionist organisations and was also a notable collector of books and artefacts, most of which went to the University of Jerusalem. His commercial work included illustrating numerous books on Jewish subjects, including books for children, among them ‘Silver Wing’, ‘Golden Harp: Jewish Stories for Children’, ‘The Golden Thread’ and ‘The Everlasting Nay’. He also designed the Holocaust Memorial for the Leicester Synagogue. In 1948, he designed the official poster for the London Olympic Games. He participated in group exhibitions at Ben Uri including the Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Jewish Painters and Sculptors in 1950, and (posthumously) Characters from the Bible (1998), Czech Jewish Artists from the Collection and Czech Routes: Selected Czechoslovak Artists in Britain from the Ben Uri and Private Collections (2019). Walter Herz died in London, England in 1965.
