Painter, printmaker and teacher Sylvia Finzi was born into a Jewish family in London, England in 1948. She attended the Slade School of Fine Art, where she received her diploma in 1970, later studying printmaking as a postgraduate under Agathe Sorel at Camberwell School of Art. She has travelled widely and after graduating relocated to Germany where she was a guest teacher for painting, drawing and printmaking in Munich (1977-79), a Visiting artist and lecturer at the Heatherley School of Art in London (1979-83) and, afterwards, Visiting Artist at Westfield College (London University) for one year. She has exhibited widely including in group exhibitions at the Hayward (1982) and Woodlands Art Gallery (1988), and had a solo exhibition at Swiss Cottage Gallery in London and a joint exhibition with Agathe Sorel at Ben Uri Gallery (Dean Street) in 1985. Her oeuvre includes paintings, drawings, etchings and woodcuts including illustrations to a poem by Jeremy Adler and Ex Libris dedicated to Walter and Liesel Schwab at Ben Uri. Her commissions include a mural for a new wing of Lewisham hospital in South London in the late 1980s. In 1992 her work was included in the exhibition 'Jewish Artists at the Slade', alongside works by Frank Auerbach, David Bomberg, Bernard Cohen and Mark Gertler, among others, at Ben Uri Gallery.
Silvia Finzi currently lives and works in London. Her work is represented in public collections including the British Museum, the Central Library, the V&A, and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
