Artist Henry Edion (né Heinrich Edelstein) was born into a French-Jewish family in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) in 1905. During the Second World War, he was captured by the Nazis in 1940 and held for four years in concentration camps in southwest France, where he was encouraged to paint by fellow prisoner and German Expressionist painter Gert Wollheim (his mother was deported to Thereseienstadt, where she perished). After the war, Edion studied at L'Academie de la Grande Chaumiere (where a model was provided but no instruction) in Paris. He subsequently lived and worked in Australia, where he joined his older brother and earned a living painting portraits of Melbourne’s Jewish community until 1955. Afterwards he travelled in Indo-China, Italy, Canada, and America, before eventually moving to England in 1962, where he Anglicised his name to 'Henry' and held his first solo exhibition at Crane Kalman Gallery, who subsequently represented him. His work, much influenced by the threat of Nuclear War, was also exhibited by the Arts Council and Ben Uri Gallery. Henry Edion died in London, England in 1987. In 1994 Ben Uri held a posthumous selling exhibition of Edion’s works on paper in order to fulfil his wish that his works should be sold to raise money to plant trees in Israel. Crane Kalman Gallery hosted two posthumous exhibitions: Henri Edion: Images of a Central European Misfit (1993) and Henri Edion: An Artist’s Life (1995). Edion’s work is represented in UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection and the British Museum.