An exhibition of remarkable classical figure drawings and mural studies by Hans Feibusch (1898–1998) will open in Pallant House Gallery’s De’Longhi Print Room this January. The German émigré artist, who was dubbed a 'Degenerate artist' by the Nazis, settled in England in 1933 and became Britain's most prolific specialist in mural painting in churches. Drawn from the substantial archive gifted to Pallant House Gallery from Feibusch’s London studio, the display features drawings that have not previously been exhibited. The display compliments the Gallery’s major exhibition, The Mythic Method: Classicism in British Art 1920-1950.

In 1997 the Gallery received the entire contents of Hans Feibusch’s North London studio. The studio (formerly The Studio of Sir Edwin Landseer) was established by Feibusch in 1938, the same year he was granted British citizenship. The Hans Feibusch collection at Pallant House Gallery includes around 80 paintings, 50 sculptures, several hundred drawings and studies, copies of all Feibusch’s lithographs (around 50 prints including proof stages), as well as the artist’s sketch books, easels, brushes, props, furniture and books – over 1,700 items in total. The Gallery also houses the Hans Feibusch Archive of photographs and ephemera.

Originally from Frankfurt am Main, Feibusch was born to Jewish parents and served in the German Army on the Russian front during the First World War. After the war he studied art in Munich working under the expressionist painter Karl Hofer and cubist Andre Lhote in Paris. During the 1920s he travelled across Italy, where he admired the work of Renaissance masters such as Masaccio, Piero della Francesca and Benozzo Gozzoli and whose influence can be seen in his later work.