The word charisma is overused
but when he entered a room
he had such energy and exuberance
because it was the first artist studio
that I had ever
been into
surrounded by his paintings
and easels and drawings
and everything
and a couch where he slept
My name is David Aukin
and I'm the son of Charles
and Regi Aukin
and they were close
friends of Jankel Adler
I'm interested in Adler's world
but I'm also interested in the fact
that in Adler
we have
a figure who is both part of the
Jewish world
he grew up in a traditional
Yiddish speaking
Orthodox observant family
and his other journey
is this journey into assimilation
and modernism
I would say even more so
Jankel's life was one long journey
from Łódź where he was born
through to Germany
When Hitler came to power
he obviously had to leave Germany
and he moved around again
and ended up in Paris
had a studio
I think next door to Paul Klee
and they were very good friends
He obviously was a compulsive drawer
He just
he had to have a pencil in his hand
and he had to have a sketchbook and
he would just work away
What we're looking at is a life across
what?
1927 through 1949 in these schedules
So these sketchbooks actually materialise
this man's thought process
his thinking life and his movements
So when I look at this
I can see Adler
getting on those boats at Dunkirk
for the evacuation
out of France to British shores
He's carrying this under his arm
He was brought to Glasgow
he was in an internment camp for a while
He brought with him
the whole continental attitude
towards painting
which was largely unknown
and it was very invigorating
and exciting
from Scottish artistry which in Glasgow
even during the war
was apparently very strong and ongoing
What we have here
is perhaps the first
of the Glasgow sketchbooks
and we sense that
Adler is trying
to lay down some roots in Glasgow
And as we turn the pages
indeed he steps in to the congregation
what we see
is that the onion dome
the ritual dome
head covering that the Hassan is wearing
becomes this setting sun shape
And below
that the congregation
dissolve into this shimmering mass
It is a very poignant moment
and one senses
that there is a crisis
in the Jewish world
When Jankel Adler
died my father became
the executor of the will
So the first thing he had to do
was to preserve everything
that was in the studio
among those were the sketchbooks
which he put into a large portfolio and
I don't think people really looked at
them for many years
This is a glorious sketchbook
and then this amazing page
Adler reclining
here at the base along the bottom edge
There's a second curious
figure here, a kind of echo
also a reclining figure
appears to be a system of bunk beds
and then clothes thrown onto a line
pyjama tops and bottoms
and I wanted then to move on
to what seems to me
to be a very final statement
and one that is
probably reflects Adler's state of mind
The painting he titles
Treblinka
Polish for the extermination camp
And I sense that there is
a strong connection here
with and a process of reflection
at the close of his life
When I was sort of 13, 14 years old
we had to catalogue
all the drawings and all the
sketches and all the artworks
And each one had to come out
and had to be numbered
And we would spend the weekend
or the afternoons
working on this
which is the last thing I wanted to do
as a teenager, I can assure you
But Adler just became
part of my vocabulary
my visual vocabulary
So it's very difficult
for me to be at all objective about them
I look at them and there
they're part of my life