Roman Halter: Life through Stained Glass

This remarkable exhibition will review the late Roman Halter’s extraordinary life – as a holocaust survivor and  narrator, as well as armorial designer to the Queen – through his contribution to the design of stained glass.

Born on July 7th 1927 in Chodecz, Poland to a cultured Jewish family, Roman was deported with the outbreak of war in 1939 to the Lodz Ghetto. It was here that Roman’s grandfather, the constant companion of his childhood, made him promise to tell the story of the Holocaust ‘when’ and not ‘if’ he survived. His grandfather’s entreaty was a constant refrain throughout Roman’s remarkably un-bitter career as an artist and story-teller of the atrocities he experienced.

When the war was over Roman settled in London. After a successful career as an architect, he turned his talents to designing the Royal coats of arms that went to hang in British courts and embassies around the world. With this move he transformed the metalwork skills that he had developed in a munitions factory in Nazi Dresden, into filigree emblems of his adopted home.

One such coat of arms will hang here, but it is through stained glass (mostly for London synagogues) that the story really shines. One highlight will be a stained glass Reclining Figure on which Halter collaborated with that doyen of British modernism, Henry Moore (though Moore later distanced himself from the piece).

Expect, too, lots of designs or ‘cartoons’ for stained glass (as Roman called them). Through all of these works one gains a quiet reverence for someone who witnessed such darkness as a child but who channelled this experience into the design of pure colour and light.

 This is a chance to see an important artist in stained glass – a jewelled, poignant and dazzling kind of art – in an overlooked British gallery: well-worth the short trip up the Abbey Road.