Nine more paintings by Marie-Louise von Motesiczky have been consigned by the Trust to the sale above (lots 3-11), the proceeds from which will go to further the charitable objects of the Trust.
Following the sale of eight paintings at Chiswick Auctions on 4 December 2020, the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust has consigned a further nine, the proceeds of which will go to further the charitable objects of the Trust.
The Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust is delighted to announce the acquisition of the Max Beckmann painting formerly belonging to Marie-Louise by the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, as the result of a part sale and part gift by the Trust. The purchase was supported by funding in the Netherlands from the Rembrandt Association and the Foundation for the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen.
Max Beckmann became a close friend and mentor of Marie-Louise’s from 1920 onwards, meeting his second wife Mathilde von Kaulbach (‘Quappi’) at the Motesiczkys’ apartment in Vienna. When the Beckmanns left Germany for Amsterdam in 1937 Marie-Louise did her best to assist them, even after the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940, through her aunt Ilse Leembruggen who lived in the Hague. She saw the Beckmanns in 1938 after leaving Vienna following the Anschluss and had her first solo exhibition in the Hague in January 1939. Marie-Louise returned in 1947 just before Max and Quappi went to the United States. Apollo, which Beckmann dedicated to his wife, was bequeathed by Quappi to Marie-Louise in 1986.
In September 1941 Beckmann spent a few days in the town of Valkenburg where he visited the Gemeentegrot (municipal caves), which housed a facility that belonged to the champagne house Piper Heidsieck. When he entered this space he found approximately four metre-high replicas of champagne bottles installed alongside built-in walls, with a relief and a fountain. This provided the inspiration for the setting for his painting Apollo which he substantially made in December 1941, completing it in January 1942. The caves were used by the Resistance in Valkenburg during the War, the population taking refuge there in September 1944 immediately prior to the Allied Liberation.
Although Beckmann spent ten years of his life in the Netherlands, hitherto there have been just five paintings by him in Dutch museums, including a portrait of the Lüjtens family from 1944 that was acquired by the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in 2008. In 2017 the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust made a gift of eleven of Marie-Louise’s paintings and nine works on paper to the Boijmans in recognition of their enthusiasm for her work and her close ties to Holland. Therefore it seemed an ideal context for the painting by Beckmann which speaks of his time in the Netherlands and of Marie-Louise’s friendship with him and Quappi, with whom she is shown bottom right in the right hand panel of one of Beckmann’s masterpieces, the triptych Actors (1941-42, Harvard University Art Museums).
https://www.verenigingrembrandt.nl/nl/nieuws/beckmann-voor-museum-boijmans-van-beuningen
This is the first time that a group of Marie-Louise’s work has come up for sale at auction. The proceeds will go towards fulfilling the Trust’s charitable objects.
It is with great sorrow that the Trustees announce the death of David Scrase on 31 October 2020. David was one of the founding trustees of the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust and formerly Deputy Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. His knowledge of Marie-Louise and his contribution to the Trust were invaluable. He was a wonderful colleague, an outstanding connoisseur of the visual arts and music, and a peerless friend.
https://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/news/david-scrase-15-march-1949-31-october-2020
In honour of Marie-Louise von Motesiczky’s life, friendships and European heritage, the Trust has made a grant of £500,000 for a new teaching suite as part of the Warburg Renaissance, the capital redevelopment project for the Warburg Institute on Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB, which forms part of the University of London’s School of Advanced Study. Marie-Louise, like the Warburg Library which came from Hamburg to London in 1933, was an emigré impelled to leave her home in Vienna because of the rise of Nazi Germany; in her case the decisive factor was the annexation of Austria in March 1938. Once she and her mother settled in England in 1939 they were part of an émigré circle that included friendships with several of those connected to the Warburg, most particularly Sir Ernst Gombrich, another Viennese émigré (1936), who became Director of the Warburg Institute from 1959-76 and a great admirer of Marie-Louise’s work.
The Archive Gallery at Tate Britain has been renamed in perpetuity as the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Archive Gallery, in recognition of the largest gift from a private trust to Tate Archives.
The newly named Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Archive Gallery at Tate Britain will open on 7 October with a unique display of over 350 items, drawing on the personal papers of émigré painter, Marie-Louise von Motesiczky (1906-1996), as well as related Tate Archive collections and paintings, generously supported by the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust. The display is part of the regular six-monthly changing programme in the Archive Gallery.
Born into a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna, on her mother’s side, Motesiczky left school in 1920, and subsequently attended art classes in The Hague, Vienna, Paris, and Berlin. In 1927/8 she was invited by Max Beckmann to join his master class at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. She and her mother Henriette left Vienna immediately after Hitler’s annexation of Austria in March 1938. At the beginning of 1939 they made their way to England which became their home for the rest of their lives. Marie-Louise’s brother Karl remained in Vienna; he was arrested in October 1942 for anti-Nazi resistance and sent to Auschwitz in February 1943, where he died of typhus four months later.
Following her ambition “If you could only paint a single good picture in your lifetime, your life would be worthwhile”, Motesiczky created over three hundred paintings, mainly portraits, self-portraits and still-lifes, in a career that spanned over seven decades. Many of these works now hang in major public galleries, including Tate, throughout the world.
The new display marks 80 years since the artist’s arrival in the UK and visualises the experience of exile, exploring its impact on Motesiczky’s art. It brings to life Motesiczky’s family background, their network of friendships and journey into exile. It also looks at the circle of fellow e?migre?s she moved in especially in Hampstead and her relationships with the two most important people in her life: the writer Elias Canetti (1905–1994) with whom she was emotionally involved for three decades, and her mother Henriette (1882-1978) who became Marie-Louise’s most remarkable subject. After Marie-Louise’s death her struggle to gain artistic recognition was taken over by the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust.
The Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust has supported Tate Archives since 2012, when the personal papers of Marie-Louise von Motesiczky were presented to Tate. In addition to the major gift renaming the Archive Gallery and the associated display, the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust is supporting Tate Archive’s Émigré Art Archives project – a three-year cataloguing and digitisation project, comprising the professional papers of J.P. Hodin, the personal papers of David Mayor and his wider Viennese family, and the sketchbooks of Jankel Adler. This project also includes a public engagement programme of films, show and share sessions, and a symposium.
Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain said, “This generous grant by the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust is a fitting and lasting tribute to one among many émigré cultural figures who have enriched this country in inestimable ways. This and other grants by her Trust has helped to cement Tate Archive’s reputation as a centre of excellence for the study of émigré artists and art writers particularly those who fled Europe before the Second World War, which now number over 50 such collections”.
Frances Carey, Chair of the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust said, “Tate has done Marie-Louise proud. It is so important for archival material of this kind to be properly looked after and made available in person and on line, Tate’s facilities and expertise ensure that people everywhere can understand the trajectory of not just a single individual but a whole milieu, and a chapter in history which resonates to this day.”
For press information contact pressoffice(Replace this parenthesis with the @ sign)tate.org.uk or call +44(0)020 7887 8730. High resolution press images can be downloaded from tate.org.uk/press
NOTES TO EDITORS
The Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Display
Open from 7 October 2019 – 27 March 2020 in the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Archive Gallery, Lower Level, Tate Britain.
Entrance is free.
About Tate Archive
Tate Archive collects and makes accessible a wealth of material relating to the history of British art. Located at Tate Britain, the archive collections comprise materials such as letters, diaries, financial records, sketches, photographs, exhibition histories, audio-visual material and increasingly, born-digital material – all of which relate to artists, art practice, and art world figures and organisations.
Tate Archive is free to use. To consult our collections, researchers just need to register and make an appointment to visit the Reading Rooms at Tate Britain, open Monday to Friday (except the first Friday of each month) 11.00–17.00. reading.rooms(Replace this parenthesis with the @ sign)tate.org.uk or call +44 0)20 7887 8838.
Before you visit, you can search for materials of interest from the catalogued holdings by using the online catalogue (archive.tate.org.uk), and you can browse a range of digitally available items on our website at tate.org.uk/art/archive/collections.
Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust
The painter Marie-Louise von Motesiczky was born in Vienna in 1906. Leaving Vienna immediately after the Anschluss with Germany in 1938, she and her mother Henriette arrived in England in 1939 where they were to spend the rest of their lives.
Several critically acclaimed exhibitions, especially in Liverpool, London, New York and Vienna, have acquainted the public with Motesiczky’s oeuvre which comprises portraits, self-portraits, still-lifes, landscapes and allegorical paintings. During her lifetime, the main body of her work was kept together by the artist then passed to the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust. Much of that work is now distributed among public collections in the UK, Ireland, Austria, Germany, Holland and in one case, the United States.
The Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust was created as a Trust by foundation document on the 28 October 1992, some four years before Marie-Louise died. It received charitable status on the 21 November 1996 and was incorporated as a company limited by guarantee with charitable status in 2011. The creation of the Trust was the vision of Marie-Louise to provide a vehicle after her death for the preservation and promotion of her work, and the charitable support of the arts and other objects. Two of the original Trustees, David Scrase and Sean Rainbird are still on the Board.
In August 2019, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation named the SOS Children’s Village Hinterbrühl the HOUSE OF LIFE. In the presence of Supervisory Board Chairman Irene Szimak, Danny Rainer of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, Israeli Ambassador Talya Lador-Fresher, State Councillor Ulrike Königsberger-Ludwig and Peter-Michael Lingens, son of the resistance fighters Ella and Kurt Lingens and many other guests, a plaque was attached to the former Schweizerhaus on the Motesiczky family’s estate at Hinterbrühl in memory of Karl Motesiczky.