Frank Auerbach was born to Jewish parents in Berlin, Germany in 1931; he was sent to England in 1939 and later attended St Martin's School of Art and the Royal College of Art, also studying in David Bomberg's evening classes at the Borough Polytechnic. In 1956, he held his first solo exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery in London, where he exhibited until 1963; He was represented by Marlborough Galleries from 1965 until their closure in 2024. An internationally acclaimed and exhibited artist, several major retrospectives have been held, including at Tate Britain in 2015.

Listen to his story here or read the full biography on the BURU database: https://www.buru.org.uk/contributor/frank-auerbach

Franz Catzenstein (later Francis Matthiesen) was born into a Jewish family in Hanover, German Empire (now Germany) on 24 July 1897 or 1898. He was the director and owner of the eponymous Matthiesen Gallery in Berlin. In 1933, with the rise of Nazism, he first fled to Zurich, Switzerland and then settled in London, England, where he established the Matthiesen Gallery anew, specialising in European Old Masters, impressionists and twentieth century masters.

Listen to his story here or read the full biography on the BURU database: https://www.buru.org.uk/contributor/francis-matthiesen

Francis Bacon was born on 28 October 1909 in Dublin, Ireland, the second of five children of English parents and moved to London in 1926, his emerging homosexuality having severely strained relations with his parents. Ostensibly self-taught, by the 1950s he had become one of the most acclaimed British painters of the twentieth century, with a roster of exhibitions worldwide in his lifetime and posthumously. His expressionist work is held in numerous UK public collections, including the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art, Norwich, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, and Tate, London.

Listen to his story here or read the full biography on the BURU database: https://www.buru.org.uk/contributor/francis-bacon

Eva Frankfurther was born into a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany in 1930; following the rise of National Socialism, the Frankfurther family fled to London in 1939; she spent a year at Stoatley Rough boarding school in Surrey, and was afterwards evactuated to Hertfordshire. After the war she studied at St Martin's School of Art, where her fellow students included Frank Auerbach. Quickly disillusioned with the London arts scene, she worked evenings at Lyons Corner House, painting portraits during the day of the ethnically diverse, largely immigrant population of London, among whom she lived and worked and whose lives she championed.

Listen to her story here or read the full biography on the BURU database: https://www.buru.org.uk/contributor/eva-frankfurther

Eddie Chambers was born to Jamaican immigrant parents in Wolverhampton, England in 1960. Working with artists such as Keith Piper, Chambers's early exhibitions centred on ideas of 'Black Art', as a racially conscious form of art making, while his later curatorial projects included solo exhibitions of work by Lesley Sanderson, Eugene Palmer, Denzil Forrester, Medina Hammad, Tam Joseph and Frank Bowling. His monographs include Black Artists in British Art: A History Since the 1950s, (2014), Roots & Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain (2017) and World is Africa: Writings on Diaspora Art (2021).

Listen to his story here or read the full biography on the BURU database: https://www.buru.org.uk/contributor/eddie-chambers

Barnett Freedman was born to Russian-Jewish émigré parents in Stepney, London in 1901. He took classes at St Martin's School of Art before enrolling at the Royal College of Art and later became known as a painter and for his book cover designs and illustrations.

Listen to his story here or read the full biography on the BURU database: https://www.buru.org.uk/contributor/barnett-freedman

R. B. Kitaj was born in Chagrin Falls, USA in 1932 into a non-practising Jewish family; after studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria and serving in the US Army, he moved to England to study at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford (1958–59), and then at the Royal College of Art, London (1959 –61). Kitaj became a key figure in European and American contemporary painting; his often controversial work, explored history, cultural, social and political ideologies, as well as his conflicted Jewish-American identity.

Listen to his story here or read the full biography on the BURU database: https://www.buru.org.uk/contributor/rb-kitaj

Sin Wai Kin (formerly known as Victoria Sin) was born to a Chinese father and British mother in Toronto, Canada in 1991. Sin moved to London in 2009, where they earned a BA in Drawing from Camberwell College of Arts and an MA in Printmaking from the Royal College of Art. Using performance, printmaking, and speculative fiction, Sin challenges societal norms of desire and identity, deeply influenced by their non-binary and mixed-race heritage. Their work, particularly the transformative drag persona Victoria Sin, critiques and expands the dialogue around gender and social expectations, encouraging a re-evaluation of binary gender constructs.

Listen to her story here or read the full biography on the BURU database: https://www.buru.org.uk/contributor/sin-wai-kin-e9ef

Sculptor Jacob Epstein was born into a Polish-Jewish family in New York City, USA in 1880 and raised in Manhattan’s multicultural Lower East Side. He moved to London in 1905 and received his first British commission for the facade of the British Medical Association Building on the Strand in 1907 - the first of many highly controversial public commissions - although his work as a portrait sculptor was always in demand. Today, he is widely recognised as a pioneering modernist, direct carver, modeller, portraitist and collector.

Listen to his story here or read the full biography on the BURU database: https://www.buru.org.uk/contributor/jacob-epstein

Zeinab Saleh was born in Kenya in 1996. She studied at London’s the Royal Drawing School (2014–15) and the Slade School of Fine Art (2016–19). As co-founder of the London artists' collective, the Muslim Sisterhood, Saleh is a pioneer for genuine diversity and promotes Muslim visibility and creativity in the art world.

Listen to her story here or read the full biography on the BURU database: https://www.buru.org.uk/contributor/zeinab-saleh