Versatile artist, notable as a draughtsman, and writer, who produced over 4,000 works. He was born in Suceava, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now part of Romania, and showed artistic promise at school. Although he attended art school in Munich, Daghani obtained no formal qualification. Aged 23 he was conscripted into the Army, then after early discharge in the early 1930s he worked for a publisher, doing clerical work, in Bucharest. With his wife Daghani was placed in a forced labour camp by the Nazis, but they escaped and were repatriated. After World War II Daghani lived as an English translator and tutor while practising his art, but, at odds with the regime, in 1959 he took an exit visa to Israel – forfeiting over 900 works on leaving Romania, then settled in Vence, France, 1961–70, and Iona, Switzerland, 1970–7.

Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)


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