Property from the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust (lots 1-28)

Introduction
Marie-Louise von Motesiczky (1906-1996) grew up in Vienna, but when Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938 she and her mother fled via Holland to England where she lived and painted until she died in her ninetieth year.

A seminal influence on her work was Max Beckmann (1884-1950) whom she met in 1920. She recalled: ‘A winged creature from Mars could not have made a greater impact on me’ and they remained in regular contact until the end of his life. Beckmann visited her in Paris, she attended his master classes in Frankfurt 1927-28 and they stayed in contact as far as possible during his exile in Holland from 1937-47, travelling to visit him and his wife ‘Quappi’ before they left for the United States.

Marie-Louise had been born into a cultured Jewish banking dynasty. Her maternal grandfather, Leopold von Lieben, was President of the Stock Exchange in Vienna, she counted the Todescos, and Ephrussis among her family circle, and her grandmother Anna was one of Freud’s early patients. Over time the family was stricken by tragedy and financial and political turmoil. Marie-Louise’s father died in a hunting accident in 1909, her mother’s income was reduced during the post First World War years by high taxation and the failure of the family bank in 1932, and the Anschluss on 13 March 1938, impelled her to leave immediately with her mother. Her brother Karl did not do so, mistakenly thinking he could continue his studies and look after the family property. He was arrested in October 1942 for aiding Jewish refugees and deported to Auschwitz, dying of typhus on 25 June 1943.

In London Marie-Louise reconnected with Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), a family friend from Vienna now similarly living in exile. Kokoschka arranged for her work to be exhibited in London, including a show at the Czechoslovak Institute in 1944. It was in Britain that she found her own ‘voice’ as an artist, living in Amersham during the war years, then a rented flat in West Hampstead and finally a large house on Chesterford Gardens in Hampstead. Another figure central to her life for nearly thirty years was the Nobel prize-winning writer Elias Canetti (1905-94), who is commemorated on the plaque dedicated to the two of them at the house in Chesterford Gardens.

But starting afresh in Britain proved challenging for Marie-Louise, and it was not until 1960 that she had a second solo show at the Beaux Arts Gallery. In contrast, on the Continent her work was exhibited in Amsterdam and The Hague in 1952, a canvas being purchased by the Stedelijk Museum; she showed in Munich (1954) and Düsseldorf (1955), and in the 1960s she enjoyed further shows in both Austria and Germany. Then, in 1985, her work was exhibited again in London at the Goethe-Institut. The catalogue included contributions by Tate curator Richard Calvocoressi, Gunther Busch, former director of the Kunsthalle in Bremen, and the renowned cultural historian and fellow émigré Sir Ernst Gombrich.

The exhibition re-ignited interest in her work, and in the years that followed her work was shown across Europe. A centenary exhibition travelled from Britain to Germany and Austria in 2006-7, her biography written by Jill Lloyd was published in 2007, followed in 2009 by a catalogue raisonné compiled by Ines Schlenker. In 2019 the ‘Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Archive Gallery’ was inaugurated at Tate Britain where the archive of her papers, photographs and the bulk of her drawings and sketchbooks are held and fully catalogued online. Her work is now in the collections of national, regional, local and university museums in Britain, Ireland, Austria, Germany, Netherlands and the United States. A major self-portrait of 1959 is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London, following its reopening in June 2023.

Literature Reference: The reference for Schlenker abbreviated in lots 1-28 is: Ines Schlenker, Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, London, 2009.

The Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust, is a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (no. 7572024) and a registered charity (no. 1140890): www.motesiczky.org. The copyright for Marie-Louise von Motesiczky’s paintings, drawings and correspondence or other written work originating from her, her mother Henriette and brother Karl, lies with the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust.

1
MARIE-LOUISE VON MOTESICZKY (AUSTRIAN-BRITISH 1906-1996)
KOALA
oil on canvas
39 x 39cm; 15 1/4 x 15 1/4in
(unframed)

Painted in 1954; Schlenker comments that Marie-Louise's depictions of animals were typically limited to house pets and birds, and that the present close up portrait of a koala, apparently sitting in the branches of a tree, is highly unusual and appears to be unique in her work (Schlenker p. 243).

Exhibited
Munich, Städitsche Galerie, Erna Dinklage, Marie Louise Motesiczky, 1954, no. 130

Schlenker no. 128