Sculptor and graphic artist Georg Ehrlich was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) on 22 February 1897 and studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) from 1912–15, mastering etching and lithography. During the First World War, he served in the Austrian army. In 1920 he moved to Munich, holding his first solo exhibition and establishing a reputation as a graphic artist working in an Expressionist manner. In 1924, after returning to Vienna, he worked predominantly as a sculptor in a realist style and his first commission to the blind organist Joseph Labor (1928, Vienna, Cent Cemetery) was followed by many others, and he exhibited widely. He was awarded a Gold Medal at the World exhibition, Paris in 1937, but in the same year fled to England, joined a few months later by his wife, Bettina (née Bauer, 1903–85), a painter and later, successful illustrator, who also assisted him in casting and patinating his bronzes. Ehrlich's work was included in the Exhibition of Twentieth Century German Art mounted at the New Burlington Galleries in London, as a riposte to the Nazi so-called 'Degenerate Art' exhibition mounted in Munich in 1937. He held a solo show at the Matthiesen Gallery, London in 1939.
In June 1940 he was interned as a so-called ‘enemy alien’ in Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man, participating in the first camp exhibition in September 1940. After release, he participated in wartime refugee exhibitions including Artists’ Aid Russia (1942, Wallace Collection) and Artists’ Aid Jewry (1943, Whitechapel) and at Ben Uri Gallery in 1944 (also in 1951, 1953, 1955, 1956, 1961 and 1968). His public commissions include a pietà Bombed Child (1943, Chelmsford Cathedral), a small, classical war memorial, Pax (1945, Canley Cemetery, Coventry), and the double-figure, Young Lovers (1950–1951, the precinct of St Paul’s Cathedral). His Two Sisters (1944) is at Essendon Primary School, Welwyn Garden City. A regular Royal Academy exhibitor, Ehrlich became an Academician in 1963, had an Arts Council exhibition in 1964, and was a member of both the Royal Society of British Arts and the London Group. His bronze portraits heads include Benjamin Britten (1950–52). He died in Lucerne, Switzerland on 1 July 1966, and was buried in Vienna. His work is represented in UK collections including the Arts Council Collection, Ben Uri Collection, the National Portrait Gallery, the Red House, Aldeburgh, and Tate.
