Arthur Segal

Arthur Segal was born to Jewish parents 13 July 1875 in Iaşi, Romania, and died 23 June 1944 in London.

He studied at the Berlin Academy from 1892; with Schmid-Reutte and Hölzel in Munich in 1896; and later in Paris and Italy in the early 1900s. He moved to Berlin in 1904, where he exhibited his work with Die Brucke and Der Blaue Reiter, two leading German Expression groups.

In 1910 he co-founded the Neue Sezession, a group of artists whose work was rejected by the Berliner Sezession. On the outbreak of war in 1914 he moved to Ascona, Switzerland with his family, and remained there until 1920. During the war, Switzerland became a refuge for many artists like Segal, and whilst he was there he exhibited some of his work with Arp and Dada in the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich.

In 1920 he returned to Berlin, where in 1923 he founded his own art school, Novembergruppe. In 1925 he was offered a teaching job in New Bauhaus in Dessau, but he declined. Because of his Jewish background he was prevented from exhibiting his work in Germany, and so in 1933 he moved to Palma, Majorca and then London, where he set up another school with his daughter Marianne.