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11 April
–
13 August 2006 Tate Liverpool |
Marie-Louise von Motesiczky 1906-1996
“If you could only paint a single good picture in your lifetime, your life would be worthwhile.”
Marie-Louise von Motesiczky
After successful exhibitions at the Goethe Institute, London in 1985 and the Österreichische Galerie, Belvedere, Vienna in 1994, Marie-Louise von Motesiczky was widely acclaimed as one of the most talented and original artists of her time. The celebrated art historian, Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001), paid tribute to her striking individuality and praised the delicacy and subtlety of her painting. Several major museums, including Tate, possess fine examples of her work, yet the scope of her oeuvre remains relatively unknown.
Motesiczky was born in Vienna in 1906 into a wealthy and distinguished Jewish family. As a young woman, she studied at the Städel Art School in Frankfurt with Max Beckmann (1884-1950), who became a life-long friend and mentor. The German painter would become an important early influence on her work.
She devoted most of the 1930s to painting, but when the Nazis marched into Vienna in 1938, Motesiczky and her mother immediately fled, first to the Netherlands, then Switzerland, finally arriving in England in 1939. Motesiczky's brother Karl remained in Austria, where he arranged for her works to be sent to London. It is thanks to him that most of her early work survives today. In 1939 he founded a resistance group, helping Jews to escape the Nazis. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 and was sent to Auschwitz, where he died the following year.
In England, Motesiczky lived and worked in a highly gifted community of exiled artists and intellectuals. Shortly after her arrival in London she met the writer Elias Canetti (1905-1994), with whom she embarked upon a turbulent relationship that was to last for the rest of their lives and which was characterised by a vital creative exchange and unfailing mutual support for each other's work. She also renewed contact with the artist Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), now in exile in England.