'Gitl Braun makes sculptures, photographs them and destroys them, leaving the image of a memory, the memory of an image. The art that emerges from this process - and the sense of becoming and disappearing is integral to these cerebral but deeply sensuous pieces - strives towards formal perfection. Composition, colour, tone, lighting, finish are a rigorous, precise, sharply defined: Braun is a minimalist, ruthlessly discarding what doesn't serve her purpose...
Braun lives in an ultra-orthodox community in London's Stamford Hill; her first language is Yiddish, she remains observant. Crucial to the way her art developed is that she had no engagement with secular society until at the age of 46, with her eight children grown and left home, she enrolled in English language classes. At 50, she was accepted at Central St Martin's and began studying to be a painter; now 58, she makes work which evidences at once a mature sensibility and a youthful rush of excitement at discovering and assimilating art's histories.' - Jackie Wullschlager, 2009

Gitl Braun, the child of Holocaust survivors was born in Haifa in 1950. At the age of three, due to the failing health and extreme poverty of her parents, Gitl was moved to a local orphanage where she received a strictly religious upbringing. At eighteen she married a young Rabbinical scholar with whom she moved to the UK in 1973. Having raised her eight children in the orthodox community of Stamford Hill, in 2001, Gitl enrolled in a Fine Arts Programme at Central St. Martins. There she developed the unique and innovative techniques of sculpture and photography that would later win her widespread critical acclaim. Her works, many of which are rooted in her thwarted Jewish past, animate the dead voices of those left behind. Gitl Braun has exhibited internationally across the UK and the US and her work has appeared in numerous arts journals.

In conjunction with
Holocaust Memorial Day 2012 event
Tuesday, 24 Jan 2012. 7pm
featuring
Talk by survivor Leslie Kleinman
Short film screening of work by artist Gitl Braun
Readings by author Jake Wallis Simons and poet Eve Grubin
To book your place for this event, please click here