Dante Elsner (1920-97) was a Jewish Polish-born artist and ceramicist who was still a young man when his homeland was occupied by the Nazis. Dante saw his whole family - mother, father, siblings - taken away and killed in concentration camps. Through extraordinary chance and resilience Dante survived, escaping arrest and internment and eventually moving to Paris and then to London to start his life as an artist. The trauma of the holocaust had a profound impact on Dante’s life and work, including a deep distrust of those in power.

In this extraordinary account, Dante’s granddaughter, the poet Maia Elsner, pieces together the artist’s life from interviews with him, his widow and family, as well as uncovering thousands of stunning raku pots and an incredible archive of paintings, drawings and sketches.

Dante’s distrust of the art world has led to his work going largely unnoticed. That is changing now. Dante Elsner is a beautiful and timely appraisal of this exceptional artist featuring hundreds of full colour images of the artwork and ceramics.

This spectacular book is a beautiful and haunting meditation on life, trauma, and art. Written with sensitivity and grace, Maia Elsner offers a stunning tribute to a grandfather's legacy, showing how stories travel from generation to generation, carrying the light of hope even in the darkest of times.

Ruth Behar, author of Letters from Cuba

Maia Elsner is a Mexican-Polish-Jewish-British writer whose debut collection Overrun by Wild Boars (Flipped Eye, 2021) won a Somerset Maugham Award. She is currently a Zell Fellow at the Helen Zell Writer's Program in Michigan, where her writing has won the Hopwood Award for non-fiction.

ISBN 978-1-913749-44-6 / hardback / 132 pages / 220 x 184mm / September 2023 / Printed on Fedirogini Ispira and Arena stocks with Colorplan Factory Yellow Finelinen cover.

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