Life in Frankfurt 1898-1939

After the National Socialists rose to power in 1933, Schames – like all Jewish artists – was gradually pushed to the margins of the German art world—barred from public exhibitions and stripped of institutional support. Instead, he was only able to show his work to Jewish audiences in exhibitions of the Jüdischer Kulturbund or in his own studio. In 1937, seven of his works were confiscated from public collections as part of the Nazi campaign against “Degenerate Art.” In January 1939, after the violent 1938 November Pogroms (Kristallnacht), he fled Germany.

Life in England 1939-1948

Schames fled to England via Holland and arrived there on 23 January 1939. He lived in Golders Green in northwest London, already home to a significant cohort of German speaking refugees – so much so that bus drivers would announce local stops as ‘Finchleystrasse’. Despite the fact that there was no public enthusiasm for German art, he swiftly began to forge a career. His first exhibition was shown at the Brook Street Galleries in March 1940.

Schames was among the early members of the Free German League of Culture (FGLC), a politically inspired, left-leaning organization offering cultural support to anti-Nazi German refugees in Britain throughout the war.

At the outbreak of war against Germany and its Allies, around 80,000 German and Austrian citizens — many of whom had fled Nazi persecution — were registered as ‘aliens’ and faced immediate incarceration.

From spring to October 1940, Schames was interned in Huyton Camp, near Liverpool, as a so-called ‘enemy alien’. Ever resourceful, without access to traditional painting materials, he invented his own.

Released on 13 October 1940, Schames became a volunteer fire guard during The Blitz, a bombing campaign by Nazi Germany against the UK, which lasted from September 7, 1940 to May 11, 1941. He participated in the important Civil Defense Artists’ exhibitions at the Cooling Galleries in Bond Street. He began creating mosaics using shards of window glass, rusted nails, burnt wood and other rubble he scavenged from the streets and bombed buildings. These works, which he called “war mosaics,” were deeply symbolic—transforming destruction into artistic expression and becoming a means of processing trauma and displacement.

In 1942 and 1943, Schames held solo shows at fellow internee and friend Jack Bilbo’s Modern Art Gallery. He also contributed regularly to Civil Defence, FGLC and Ben Uri Museum exhibitions where his work was well-received by the public and in the press.

Life in New York 1948 –1967

In 1947 and 1948, Edith and Samson immigrated to the United States, got married and settled in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens, New York. He continued to develop his art and also worked on commissions for synagogues and Jewish institutions, contributing significantly to postwar Jewish art and religious symbolism.

In 1950, Schames presented a solo exhibition titled “A Monument to Hitler’s Infamy” at the Carlebach Gallery in New York. His themes were now cityscapes and landscapes, interiors and still lifes, portraits and self portraits, which he painted, drew, and collaged. While he found a degree of stability and recognition – exhibiting in major cities like Paris, Jerusalem, and New York – he also encountered a more subtle form of exclusion. Although his work often moved away from themes of Jewish memory and endurance, in an art scene increasingly dominated by abstract expressionism and formal experimentation, his work was often sidelined as too narrative, too historical, or simply unfashionable.

Schames died in 1967, leaving behind a body of work that blends modernist aesthetics with spiritual and historical depth. He only gradually began to achieve posthumous recognition by the end of the 1980s.