Portrait of Avram Stencl

Avram Stencl was born in Poland in 1897 and moved to Weimar Berlin in 1921, where he remained until. following the rise of Nazism, he was forced to flee, immigrating to England in 1936 and settling in Whitechapel, where he remained for more than forty years. Here, he launched his career as a Yiddish poet and edited the journal 'Loshn un Lebn' (‘Language and Life’), which in August 1943 included an article about Jewish painters with illustrations by Jankel Adler and Josef Herman – the latter was also an occasional contributor to the journal. Herman’s portrait of Stencl, carried out in 1946, testifies to their friendship, formed in London in this period.