Born in Austria. Clara Klinghoffer moved to Britain where she trained at the John Cass Institute, the Central School of Art and Design, and the Slade from 1919 to 1921. She travelled to Paris in the late 1920s, and lived for a while in Holland. With the turmoil of 1939, Klinghoffer immigrated to America. From that time on she divided her time between New York and London.
Klinghoffer was admired for her highly polished, academic drawing and portraiture. Tate Director J.B. Manson praised her work in the Studio in December 1927, because she had not, he wrote, fallen into the trap of trying to be modern and following French artists, such as Cezanne, while art historian and Tate curator Mary Chamot compared her drawings to 'the great Italian masters' in Modern Painting in England (London 1937). The Old Troubadour (exhibited at the Women's International Art club in 1928) was singled out by the Apollo critic in April 1928 as 'an outstanding achievement, both as a bit of character delineation and as sheer painting'. Among Klinghoffer's portrait sitters were the actor Vivien Leigh in costume as Shakespeare's Cleopatra, the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, and her friends the artists Lucien and Orovida Pissarro. The National Portrait Gallery owns her paintings of the pianist Harriet Cohen (1925), who was known for her interpretation of Bach.
Her first solo show took place in 1920 at the Hampstead Art Gallery, while Klinghoffer was still in her teens. Later exhibitions included shows of her drawings at the Leicester Galleries (1923), and at the Redfern Gallery (1926, 1929 and 1938). She also exhibited with the New English Art Club, the Royal Academy and the London Group. Her work was exhibited at the Nationale Kunsthandel Amsterdam (1928), a number of American Galleries, and the Venice Biennale. More recently, in 1976, a solo exhibition was held at the Belgrave Gallery, London. |
