Lucifer Reviews Sodom, 1959
Artist Fay Pomerance (née Levy) was born into a Jewish family in Birmingham, England in 1912; her father, Sol Levy, was the founder of the Scala Cinema chain. She trained at the Birmingham School of Art from 1928-33 and, after graduating, worked as a freelance commercial artist and began to participate in group exhibitions, particularly, the Sheffield Society of Artists of which she became a member, and later, the Society of Women Artists and the Pastel Society. Her work mostly addressed biblical themes and between 1946 and 1967 she worked principally on her Theme of Lucifer series. She held her first solo exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool in 1949, followed by others in London at the Leicester, the Molton and the Redfern Galleries, as well as participating in group shows at the Archer Gallery, London (1952), Sheffield University, Library Gallery (1962) and the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne (1963). In the 1940s, as prominent members of the Sheffield Ango-Jewish community, she and her husband Ben Pomerance (whom she had married in 1936), encouraged local Jewish community support for German-Jewish refugee painter Erich Wolsfeld, resulting in his commission to paint Dorothy Stone (on loan to Ben Uri Collection). She also participated in numerous group exhibitions at Ben Uri Gallery (1951-81), where she also held four solo exhibitions: Epic and Image Paintings and Monochromes by Fay Pomerance (1956); The Sphere of Redemption: an Exhibition of Paintings, Prints and Wood carvings on a theme of Lucifer (1967); Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Woodcarvings (1972); and Paintings, Drawings and Prints (1981). A retrospective exhibition of her work was held at St Mary's College, Durham in 1999. Fay Pomerance died in Bristol, England in 2001 and a memorial exhibition, The Theme of Redemption, was held at Durham Cathedral in 2004. Her work is held in the UK in the Art Collection at Durham University and the Ben Uri Collection.
