New art prize to commemorate artist who explored the intergenerational trauma of her mother’s escape from Nazi Germany

The life and legacy of an artist and academic who died in a road accident last November is being celebrated with a new art prize and exhibition at the University of Leeds.

Senior lecturer at the University of Leeds, Dr Judith Tucker was a painter with a wide-ranging practice rooted in landscape, ecology and memory. Through painting and drawing, Judith explored the intergenerational trauma of her mother and grandmother’s escape from Nazi Germany in the 1930s and the murder of other members of her family in the Holocaust.

Judith described her own works as “an attempt to connect to the past… made in the full knowledge that the connection is impossible”.

Throughout the past decade, the artist worked alongside her partner, the poet Harriet Tarlo, on collaborative landscape painting and poetry projects.

“She was an amazing painter and an incredible drafts woman,” Tarlo told the JC. “She was a very generous educator and had a strong sense of nurturing artistic communities.”

Tarlo said that Judith's artistic interests were around “landscape of memory”, and that her earlier work, before they collaborated, focused on her mother's legacy as a refugee from Berlin.

“It was a major part of her identity,” said Tarlo who herself has a Jewish father who left Poland in an earlier generation. “She did talk about it, and it was a massive part of her work. When we started working together, she was moving on from that phase, but she’s done a lot of work on the Holocaust and particularly on resorts prior to the Second World War, where her family and other Jewish families had gone on holiday.”

Judith’s contributions will be commemorated and continued with the awarding of the first two Judith Tucker Memorial Prizes at the opening of the Contemporary British Painting exhibition at Persistence Works in Sheffield on Saturday 30 November. Prizes of £1500 and £3000 will be awarded by professor Griselda Pollock, Tarlo and Turner Prize-winning artist Lubaina Himid to a UK-based woman artist who explores the relations between memory, place, environment and landscape through contemporary painting.

An exhibition of her work at the University of Leeds’ School of Design, where she was a lecturer, is the tribute from her colleagues and friends within the university, and seven of her paintings and drawings have been acquired for the university art collection. One of these, Why Destroy a Thing of Beauty? from the Night Fitties series by Tucker and Tarlo, won a Jackson’s Art Prize in 2020. Both displays run until 13 December.

Dr Helen Clarke, lecturer at the School of Design and curator of the show, said: “The work in this exhibition shines with colour and light, two of the outstanding features of Judith Tucker's painting. The gallery itself, Space@Design, is a tribute to her passion, energy and generosity in supporting creative practice. Judith Tucker will be loved and missed always, and we are very privileged to be able to share her work in the School of Design.”

In addition, a memorial lecture is taking place on Wednesday 27 November at the Paul Mellon Centre in London, by Pollock, who has described Judith as “an artist working on the edge, exploring memory and place: lost, remembered or threatened”.

Since Judith curated shows as well as being exhibited herself as an artist, there have been group shows in her memory this past year, with more to come. Friends and those inspired by Judith were also keen to donate ta fund in her memory, which Tarlo set up.

“What she would have wanted, if she'd ever won the lottery or something, would have been to set up a prize for women artists,” said Tarlo. “So that's what we did and we were amazed at the response.”

She added: “She was 63 when she died, and she was doing really well, but getting better and better and achieving with her own work. At the School of Design, she lobbied and fought for exhibition space, which she succeeded in getting, and curated, so it was fitting that she should have a show in that space.”