In 1992, Marie-Louise von Motesiczky set up a Charitable Trust to further the education of the public in the fine arts and to look after her artistic and personal legacy by familiarizing a wider audience with her work. Four trustees, Frances Carey, Julian Chadwick, Sean Rainbird and David Scrase, are now overseeing the work of the Trust.
In November 1998, the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust began to operate. Ines Schlenker is working on the catalogue raisonné of the paintings. A major retrospective exhibition marking the 100th anniversary of the artist's birth in 2006 is currently being shown.
The Trust is based in Motesiczky's former home in Hampstead. Apart from her paintings and drawings, the artist's substantial archive, consisting of her correspondence (for example with Max Beckmann, Elias Canetti and Benno Reifenberg) as well as family letters, writings by Motesiczky, photographs and material on art works and exhibitions, is kept here.
Four conservators are looking after the collection: Sam Hodge and Rachel Barker (paintings), Rosie Freemantle (paper) and Mike Howden (frames). The majority of the paintings require only the most rudimentary treatment with a few more difficult cases.
A substantial number of paintings have been shown in exhibitions in the last few years, for example at the Kunstforum in Vienna (Jahrhundert der Frauen, 1999), the National Portrait Gallery in London (Painting the Century, 2000), the Sparkasse in Frankfurt (Aus der Meisterklasse Max Beckmann, 2000). Two paintings were on loan to the Museum Expressiver Realismus in Kißlegg, Germany, and a self-portrait was included in an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London in autumn 2001. Several paintings, mainly portraits, were shown in the exhibition Die Liebens at the Jüdisches Museum in Vienna in 2004. The portrait Frau Seidler, 1940, is currently on show at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The Trust would welcome any information on Marie-Louise von Motesiczky's life, work and friends. Especially helpful would be advice on paintings that so far could not be traced - Missing Works. |
