Marie-Louise Von Motesiczky
(October 24, 1906 - June 10, 1996) |
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Art Work
| Name: |
Marie-Louise Von Motesiczky |
| Gender: |
Female |
| Place of Birth: |
Vienna |
| Nationality: |
Austrian |
| Birth: |
October 24, 1906 |
| Death: |
June 10, 1996 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
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Quick Facts
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Biography
Marie-Louise Von Motesiczky was Austrian. Her View from the Window, Vienna (1925, Tate) is a vista of rooftops seen from her family's flat in the city. She trained in Parts, and then from 1927-8 under Max Beckmann in Frankfurt. Her painting is figurative, expressionist and sometimes allegorical. The weighty presence of her figures, her energetic drawing and intense color are similar to Beckmann's, and these characteristics, allied to her subject matter, often self portraiture and images of women, also link her to Paula Modersohn-Becker.
In 1938 Von Motesiczky and her mother (who was Jewish) fled to the Netherlands to escape the Nazis, and then to England. Her Self-Portrait with a Red Hat (1938), made during this upheaval, Is a remarkable assertion of her presence, both as a vibrant, elegant young woman and an artist with a questioning gaze, although the shadowy second figure in the painting seems to hint at the dangers surrounding her. It was during their stay in Holland, in early 1939, that Von Motesiczky had her first solo exhibition. Her brother who had stayed behind was killed in Auschwitz, and she commemorated him in a painting made several years after his death. Among her British works is a portrait of the writer Elias Canetti (1992. National Portrait Gallery). Her most significant late paintings are the series of portraits of her mother, including From the Niyin into Day (1975, Tate) which are moving in their unflinching scrutiny of the old woman who is portrayed nearly bald, smoking a pipe, walking with sticks, or bundled up in bed.
Helen Lessore gave Von Motesiczky a retrospective at her Beaux-Arts Gallery in i960, and paid tribute to her in the introduction to A Partial Testament (London 1986). The Goethe Institute held a major exhibition in 1985, with a catalogue essay by Ernst Gombrich, and two years before her death an exhibition was organized jointly by the Osterreichische Galerie, Vienna, and the City Art Gallery, Manchester. |
Samples of Work
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