Born in Frankfurt in 1898, Feibusch came under the influence of the German Expressionists, and in particular of Max Beckmann. “I painted natural objects, or perhaps fantastic ones,” he remembered, “but reduced to simple forms and bright colours holding a balance between what seemed to me the spiritually significant and the fussy detail.”
Hans Feibusch, courtesy of the Feibusch Estate
A large Crucifixion dominates our east wall and below it is a smaller Adoration of the Shepherds.
St John’s was hit by a firebomb in December 1940. The roof of the nave and the east window were destroyed. When the church was rebuilt in 1950-51 as the official church of the Festival of Britain, the architect Thomas Ford decided not to replace the east window but to commission murals from Hans Feibusch instead. By the time of this commission, Feibusch had already undertaken a great deal of work for the Church of England in the Diocese of Chichester, and his reputation was well established. Ford and Feibusch went on to work together for the next 10 years.
Conservation project
Over the last few years, we raised over £55,000 for the conservation of our Feibusch murals as part of our redevelopment project between 2021 and 2022. The larger mural, the Crucifixion, was flaking onto the floor and both need urgent attention. Conservator Claudia Fochetti worked in situ over Summer 2022 and the refursbished mural was unveiled alongside the relaunch of St John’s Waterloo in Autumn 2022.
We are very grateful to Paul Werth, grandson of Hans Feibusch, who in 2021 consigned several Feibusch drawings and paintings for sale at Chiswick Auctions, raising a total of £11,000. Thanks to Paul’s great generosity and to Chiswick Auctions for waiving commission, this gave a substantial boost to our appeal to save the murals. Together with grants from Heritage of London Trust, the Kirsch Foundation and many private individual donations, we raised £31,000 with the rest of the funds coming through donations to the Reignite Project.
The Crucifixion, Hans Feibusch (1951) – St John’s Waterloo
Find out more about Feibusch
We continue to work with others to raise Hans Feibusch’s profile. We believe that the contribution Feibusch and other, mostly Jewish, refugee artists made to post-war Britain deserves to be more widely known.
Article
Here’s an article on Hans Feibusch’s life and work that we published for the Waterloo Festival in May 2020
Interview
Below is an interview with Feibusch from 1995.
Talk
Take a tour of some of the many other murals Feibusch painted in churches all over London and the South East. Here is art historian Emma Rose Barber’s talk, Finding Feibusch, delivered live online for us in November 2020.
Conference
Watch talks, including an introduction by Edmund de Waal, delivered at a symposium at St John’s entitled A Jewish Jesus: Art and Faith in the Shadow of World War Two. Taking Feibusch as a starting point, explore some of the many other Jewish refugee artists who worked for the Church or used Christian iconography in the post-war period.
Keep in touch
If you have an interest in Hans Feibusch or other refugee artists, we’d be pleased to hear from you and will keep you in touch with forthcoming events. Please contact admin@stjohnswaterloo.org.
