Mayer-Marton, Georg (1897-1960)
Creator details
- Name
- Mayer-Marton, Georg (1897-1960)
- Nationality
- British
- Biography
- Georg Mayer-Marton grew up during the final years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His youth ended with two years under fire during the Great War. He studied art at the Academies of Vienna and Munich. By 1927, married and settled in Vienna, he was Secretary, then Vice-President of the progressive society of artists, the Hagenbund. In 1938 with the advent of the Nazis and the enactment of Hitler’s race laws, he and his wife, a gifted pianist, were forced to flee to England as penniless refugees. In 1940, during the London Blitz, his studio home in St John’s Wood was burnt by an incendiary bomb. In 1952, after the death of his wife, and redundancy following a reorganisation at the Arts Council, he was free to take up the post of Senior Lecturer in the Department of Painting at the College of Art at Liverpool. This was a fortunate move leading to a renewal of prolific artistic output, particularly in oil and, for the first time, in face mosaic, a technique he had studied in Ravenna thirty years before. His civilising influence and breadth of vision, underpinned by a deep understanding of Art History, combined with the technical skill of the practising artist, are remembered with gratitude by former students.
