Self-Portrait
Sculptor and painter Pamina Liebert was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Berlin, Germany on 27 April 1904. After an earlier career in millinery, she studied sculpture under German sculptor Fritz Klimsch at the Berlin Academy of Art from 1928-31, winning the Prix de Rome, which Nazi opposition prevented her from collecting. She married photographer Rolf Mahrenholz (1902–91) in 1929; he immigrated to Britain in 1938 and she followed in 1939. As a so-called 'enemy alien', she was initially imprisoned in Holloway, where she turned her daily bread ration into sculptures, then interned at Rushen Camp for women on the Isle of Man between 1940 and 1942. Her husband was interned on the island in a separate camp and they were permitted to meet for only two hours once a month. After release she worked in a series of menial jobs, then as a china restorer, until eventually resuming sculpture and taking up painting and drawing. By the 1960s, she had resumed sculpting, mostly in a classical manner, and painting in a bold, Expressionist style. She exhibited in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1964. She held several solo exhibitions, including at the Camden Institute (1977), Ben Uri (1981 and 1988) and Camden Arts Centre (1983). Pamina Liebert-Mahrenholz died in London, England on 21 September 2004. In 2008 a posthumous joint exhibition with Grete Marks was held at the Boundary Gallery, London; her work is represented in UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection and the Ruth Borchard Collection of self-portraits.
