01 Work, The art of War, George Mayer-Marton's Women with Boulders, with Footnotes

George Mayer-Marton

Women with Boulders, c. 1945

Watercolour

Height 573 mm, Width 792 mm

Imperial War Museums

A desolate moorland, scattered with boulders, under a dark sky. A woman in a blue dress is seated, looking at something she holds in the palm of her hand. A Madonna-like figure with a grey cloak draped around her and covering her head, stands over her, holding a baby in her arms. In the distance there is a small isolated tower, a church or an industrial building.

George Mayer-Marton was born in Gyor, Hungary and served in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War. From 1919 to 1924 he studied art in Vienna and Munich. He immigrated to England in 1938 to escape the threat of Nazi Germany, but his parents remained in Gyor. Mayer-Marton only learned of the death of his parents in 1945 and painted Women with Boulders after receiving the news that they had been deported from the ghetto in Gyor and killed. His watercolour shows a bleak landscape with two lonely female figures. The boulders are reminiscent of stones placed on Jewish graves to protect the body waiting for resurrection. More on this painting

George Mayer-Marton (1897-1960) was born in Gyor, Hungary. Served in the Austro-Hungarian army in WWI and after, in 1919, studied at the Academies of Art in Vienna and Munich. From 1924 became a significant figure in Vienna, where he held a senior position in the Hagenbund, a leading society of artists; his work was acquired by galleries in Budapest, Vienna, Brussels, Prague and Rome. He married the pianist, Grete Fried in 1923 and they lived in Vienna until 1938 when they fled to England to escape the Nazi persecution of Jews. He taught at St Johns Wood School of Art, but his studio and work were destroyed in the Blitz in 1940. Between 1940 and 1950 he lectured for the Arts Council, and following the death of his wife became senior lecturer in painting at Liverpool College of Art, 1952 until his death in 1960. While in Liverpool he designed and executed several mural and mosaic commissions for schools and churches, including the Pentacost mosaic in Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. Memorial exhibitions were held at the Walker Art Gallery, 1961 and a retrospective in Vienna, 1986. The Derby Museum, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff and the Walker Art Gallery are among the British galleries holding his work. More on George Mayer-Marton

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