Marie-Louise Von Motesiczky

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Marie Louise von Motesiczky, 1988

Marie-Louise Von Motesiczky (October 24, 1906 – June 10, 1996) was an Austrian-Jewish painter. She was born in Vienna in 1906 to an aristocratic family. After leaving school aged only 13 she attended art schools in various locations around Europe including Vienna, Paris (at the Montparnasse Painting Academy) and Berlin. In 1928 , Max Beckmann invited her to join his masterclass at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, where she honed her craft and the two became life-long friends. Motesiczky spent the next 10 years developing her craft but had to flee the Nazi annexation of Vienna in 1938.

Motesiczky, accompanied by her mother Henriette, fled to London via Amsterdam where she joined the Artists' International Association and contributed to some of their exhibitions; her first solo exhibition followed in London in 1944. During this period she also became closely involved with the writer Elias Canetti, who was to remain a close companion for many years to come.

Following the end of the war, Motesiczky exhibited her paintings in many European institutions and she continued to work from her house in Hampstead, London where she lived with her mother. Her mother the themes of her paintings after 1960, with Motesiczky chronicling her encroaching frailty in paintings such as The Old Song and From Night into Day. Motesiczky also painted many figurative ‘fantasy paintings’, dream-like paintings which blurred fantasy and reality but which alluded to her own experience and were loaded with personal symbolism.

Motesiczky's major breakthrough in the UK occurred in 1985, with a major retrospective at the Goethe Institute in London, which generated much acclaim and saw her reputation as a major Austrian artist cemented. She died in London in 1996.

Of her life in art, she once remarked “If you could only paint a single good picture in your lifetime, your life would be worthwhile.”