The Travelers

Marie-Louise von Motesiczky

1940

Painting of four people in a boat at sea featuring a nude woman in center and a woman holding a mirror and looking at her reflection on the left.

In The Travelers, one of a series of “Mother Paintings,” Marie-Louise Motesiczky depicts herself and her mother, Henrietta (the white-haired woman at right), escaping from Nazi-occupied Austria. Motesiczky was also known for her many self-portraits. Here she is represented by the naked woman in the center and/or the woman gazing at herself in the mirror. The style of the painting shows the influence of Motesiczky’s teacher, Max Beckmann (1884–1950).

Credits

University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art. © Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust 2018.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 9.

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Creator Bio

Marie-Louise von Motesiczky

1906–1996

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.

Related Guide

Visual and Material Culture, 1939–1973

Jewish visual art flourished and diversified in the postwar period, reflecting the social and political transformations taking place in the world.

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