Martin Robb

Embracing the unknown: researching the hidden life and enigmatic art of Theodor Kern

A few years ago I began researching the life and work of the Austrian-born painter and sculptor Theodor Kern (1900-1969), having discovered that he had spent the second half of his life in our town in eastern England, after fleeing his Nazi-occupied homeland. Kern wrote nothing for publication, gave few interviews, and today is virtually forgotten. I was intrigued by his story and set out to piece together his biography from the fragments of information I could find. Following a spiritual conversion in 1930, Kern’s art focused increasingly on religious themes and from about 1950, his painting took a sudden turn towards abstraction, as if moved by a yearning to find radically new ways of expressing the ineffable. In the course of my research, a collection of Kern’s sketches and unfinished paintings came into my possession, including plans for a ‘Madonna Cycle’ which he was working on at the time of his death. In this series, the artist seems to be trying to capture flows of energy emerging from some higher spiritual realm. The meanings of these late works are often difficult to discern, as though the move towards mystery in his work reflected the retreat into obscurity in his personal life. I want to explore the ways in which Kern’s late style seek to express the inexpressible through art, and reflect on how one can live with a state of ‘not knowing’ concerning the meaning of a work. I am also keen to address the question of what it means for an artist to live a hidden life as a conscious strategy. Finally, I wish to explore both the ways in which care is represented in Kern’s semi-abstract depictions of the Madonna and Child, and what it means to care for the legacy of an unknown and forgotten artist.