Marie-Louise von Motesiczky

Born to a cultured and aristocratic family in Vienna, the painter Marie-Louise von Motesiczky began taking art classes at a young age, attended several art schools, and studied with the painter Max Beckmann. Von Motesiczky and her mother fled Austria in 1938, seeking refuge in Holland before settling in England. The artist continued painting throughout the war, having her first solo exhibition at The Hague in 1939. Throughout a successful career that spanned seven decades, von Motesiczky created numerous realist portraits, including a series on her increasingly frail mother with whom she shared a close, lifelong friendship. In the 1950s and 1960s, her work moved beyond the realist style that had long defined it. A major solo exhibition at London’s Goethe Institute in 1985 marked the culmination of her long and prolific artistic career.