The display will include selected highlights from three archive collections, all of which have been catalogued and made available to the public for the first time through the Émigré Art Archives Project, alongside a selection of recently catalogued and digitised sketchbooks and sketches, generously funded by the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust.
Beginning in 2019 the Émigré Art Archives project team has transformed over 300 boxes of unsorted materials into accessible archival resources.
The extensive archive of the Czech art historian and critic Josef Paul Hodin details the prodigious career of a writer dedicated to the support of émigré artists who made the UK their home following the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s. Consisting of diaries, letters, manuscripts and photographs this archive illustrates Hodin’s unique creative process and brings into focus the hardships faced by many of his émigré subjects.
The 16 sketchbooks of the Polish-Jewish artist Jankel Adler document a tumultuous period of the artist's life after he was forced to leave his home in Germany in 1933. The sketchbooks take us across Europe, to the south of France and finally to Glasgow and the UK. During this period of transience Adler would often be without studio or canvas and these sketchbooks provided a vital outlet for artistic expression.
The family papers of the art curator and publisher David Mayor offer an insight into the history of a notable Austrian émigré family, the Schey von Koromlas, a family with close familial ties to the von Motesiczkys. The archive describes the progress of the family as they left Austria for the UK; providing details of the stage career of Mayor’s grandmother Anny Schindler and her relationship with the American-born artist, Edward Renouf, later associate editor of Wolfgang Paalen’s surrealist journal, Dyn.
To accompany material from the Émigré Art Archives project, we’re delighted to be able to show a selection of sketchbooks and sketches by Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, which offer a complete picture of the Austrian émigré artist’s career from the 1920s until her death in 1996. There are many preparatory studies, portraits of the artist’s friends and family and landscape sketches from home and abroad.
Selected by Peter Eaves (Project Cataloguer) and Adrian Glew (Archivist).