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| Radical Rocker revisited |
Artist Fermin Rocker was born into a family
of radicals and anarchists and loved capturing the ordinary, writes
Mark Blunden
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Life Class, 1980
Newspaper Vendors, 2000
Fermin Rocker
Waterlow Park, 1978
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AT 96 years old Fermin Rocker still carried his sketchbook everywhere,
even to hospital appointments.
From boy to pensioner, the London-born artist’s life saw him
deported to inter-war Germany, then live in New York, before moving
back to Holloway, where he lived until his death last year.
But to understand Rocker, and his epic paintings of revolution and
every day life, is to understand the family from which he came.
His German anarchist/socialist father Rudolph met his Jewish mother
Milly Witkop after becoming involved with the Jewish tailors’
trade union movement around Stepney and Whitechapel.
After teaching himself Yiddish, Rudolph ended up editing the Yiddish
anarchist weekly Arbaiter Fraind. Rocker senior and the young Fermin
would often travel to the East London docks to marvel at the tall
ships as they raced up the Thames.
This is where the boy, always sketchbook in hand, began his passion
for art and his love of boats. Many of his pieces reflect Rocker’s
transient life. He lived through two world wars and experienced
the sharp end of political extremism.
At the outbreak of World War I, Rudolph was interned by the British
and later Milly, too.
The family was finally deported to Holland and then Germany, where
they lived from 1919 to 1929. Belonging to a socialist family inevitably
found young Fermin swept up in the politically charged years leading
up to World War II.
The Rockers escaped the Nazi purges of the late 1920s and “with
a couple of days to spare” made for New York City.
They lived in an anarchist colony and by the late 1930s Fermin was
devoting more and more time to oil painting and soon developed a
distinctive style – precise, haunting and marked by excellent
draughtsmanship. From the 1930s to 1950s, lithography, children’s
illustration and calendar art paid the bills while Mr Rocker indulged
his true passion.
In the war and post-war years, Fermin became immersed in the realism,
re-interpreting the style with his own twist. Several of his portraits
hang in Library of Congress and one even won an award.
Fermin’s son Philip, who still lives in his father’s former
home in Anson Road, Holloway, says: “He was independent-minded
and always did his own thing, regardless of what was going on around
him.
“My father was a fairly significant member of the American
realist school but back in New York he didn’t get much recognition
at the time.”
Pictures of workers protesting, of revolution and refugees are exquisitely
painted but Rocker’s paintings show a fascination with everyday
life. They depict passengers on trains, newspaper vendors, travellers,
ordinary people in domestic settings and even painters painting.
“He came back largely because he was fed up with New York and
had a strong attachment to London from his childhood,” adds
Philip who lived with his father for the last years of his life.
“He loved Hampstead Heath and Waterlow park and went jogging
in Hampstead and Highgate until he was in his 80s. He was very fond
of Holloway and the quiet street where he lived.”
A number of Rocker’s later paintings reflected his love of
north London, including View Towards Highgate and another simply
entitled Waterlow Park. A new exhibition at the Chambers galley
features Rocker’s oil paintings, watercolours and drawings.
The gallery describes his works as “quietly political, haunting
and atmospheric, perfectly capturing what he saw as the alienation
of capitalist society”.
But all tags on his work aside, Rocker was a man devoted to drawing
and capturing life as he saw it.
• Fermin Rocker – Tribute is at the Chambers Gallery,
23 Long Lane, EC1 until January 13
020 7778 1600 |
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