Georg Mayer-Marton

Austrian painter Georg Mayer-Marton grew up during the final years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, studying in Wien (Vienna) and München after serving in World War I. By 1927, married to pianist Greta Fried and settled in Wien, he was Secretary, and then Vice-President of the progressive society of artists, the Hagenbund. During the increasingly difficult interwar years he was one of the leading artists of the time, receiving widespread recognition as an artist, with many public honors in Austria.

In 1938 Mayer-Marton emigrated to London, escaping the Nazis as a Jew. In 1940, his studio and many of his older works were largely destroyed by a bomb attack. His own artistic work then had to be neglected until the early 50s, as he taught art at the College of Art in Liverpool to earn his living while in exile. In his later work he recreated a lot of his destroyed paintings, and painted moving landscapes of the north of England. During the 1950s he concentrated on designing mosaics.

Mayer-Marton’s paintings showed expressive, cubist and futurist elements. His landscapes, moved by the wind, were mostly in darker tones. Both of his paintings presented “hors concours” in 1928, Fencing and Quadruple-sculls, are documented by illustrations in the art catalog.