Roman Halter • Life and Art through Stained Glass 1 | Page 8

FOREWORD

Life and art through stained glass

Ben Uri is delighted to present Roman
Halter: Life and Art Through Stained
Glass, in which we pay tribute to the
extraordinary life and creativity of an
architect, artist and survivor of the
Holocaust (the Shoah).
This exhibition, Halter’s first
museum survey, re-focuses the artistic
legacy of this remarkable man. Had
circumstances been different, Halter
would be best remembered today for
his many artistic achievements. As it is,
Halter is well known and revered first for
his determination to ensure that young
people, regardless of their background,
recognised and understood both the
extent of the evil and genocide of the
past, and the frighteningly persistent
reality of the potential for repetition.
Acknowledging this deep and
profound “cause”, our exhibition looks
at the “effects”. Halter’s artworks span
multiple media – from oil and gouache
to aluminium and glass – all addressed in
this survey.
However, our principal focus of
selection has been his work in stained
glass. Perhaps for the first time, we
identify both the creative expression and
technique that lie behind Halter’s stained
glass work – this most technical of media
– as fundamental to his artistic process,
from the very start of his full-time
career as an artist in the mid-1970s. As a
trained architect, Halter was more than
capable of fulfilling the demands which

2  Roman Halter

stained glass makes for balance of colour,
light and space. Yet it was his unique
and poignant message, together with
his ambition of design and inventive
structuring, which set apart his designs
from others.
We are delighted to exhibit the
product of Halter’s discussions with
Henry Moore, Reclining Figure, made
after Moore’s watercolour design. Many
other examples of Halter’s glass can
be seen across the capital; highlights
include the eighteen Chai or “life”
themed windows illuminating the
North Western Reform Synagogue at
Alyth Gardens, North West London,
and the commanding Jacob Wrestling
with the Angel at London’s Central
Synagogue near Portland Place. The
latter provoked disdain in the 1970s
for its prismatic modernity and was
removed from its original site; today
it stands as an illuminating tribute to
an artist who took the possibilities of
stained glass composition to a daring,
near-abstract extreme.
Regrettably, unlike paintings and
sculpture, stained glass windows cannot
easily be moved and displayed at the
Gallery. However this obstacle has not
thwarted our effort to demonstrate
that the architectural and structural
principles, which lie behind such
virtuoso works in glass, also inform
Halter’s powerful compositions in paint.
Halter himself wrote in a letter to his