When in 1942 the Gestapo caught up with his group Forman evaded arrest by joining a trainload of young Czechs who had been conscripted to work in labor camp in Germany.
There he later contracted scarlet fever and was transferred back to Prague where he slipped away again, only to be arrested with his brother, father and Jewish mother and sent to a concentration camp.
Werner Forman's sensitive photography and his brother Bedřich's striking design made the book an international bestseller.
In the years that followed Artia produced forty Werner Forman volumes including monographs on five important collections in the British Museum, with texts by their curators.
Fifteen volumes in all were published and repeatedly reissued in many languages, on subjects as varied as the Aztecs, T'ang China, the Vikings and the Maori.
Harvill Press published large photographic books called Werner Forman's New Zealand (1994) and in Phoenix rising - United Arab Emirates: Past, Present and Future (1996).