Roman Halter's Starved Faces 1974-1977 Oil on canvas © Roman Halter.

Artists who survived the Holocaust and later painted about their own experiences attended the launch of a new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London on Thursday September 4 2008.

The new temporary exhibition, Unspeakable: The Artist as Witness to the Holocaust, runs from September 5 until August 31 2009. The show features work from Roman Halter and Alicia Melamed Adams who were both sole members of their families to survive the holocaust.

Alicia Melamed Adams started painting in 1963. The exhibition includes four paintings reflecting on her personal experiences of the Holocaust.

She said: “I painted them for myself, I wanted to get out the sorrow from my soul but you don’t get over such experiences really. You feel guilty that you have survived and others did not.”

Paul Ryan Concentrate 2001 Ink on tissue © Paul Ryan.

Prompted by a number of recent acquisitions supported by arts charity the Art Fund, the exhibition is the first opportunity to see different artistic responses to the persecution of European Jews. The exhibit draws from the IWM’s huge art collection of around 20,000 paintings and prints.

Following the liberation of Belsen in April 1945 British war artists were brought into close contact with the realities of the Nazi concentration camps. Unspeakable includes work by Leslie Coles, Doris Zinkeisen, Eric Taylor and Mary Kessell who witnessed the camp atrocities first hand.

The exhibition also includes work by contemporary artists such as Darren Almond and Paul Ryan who have reacted to their own experiences of holocaust sites in recent times.