Ecstasy in Motley Strokes, 1960
Anna Mayerson was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) in 1906. She studied Fine Art in Zürich, Switzerland and at the Vienna Academy. In 1938, following the Anschluss (Nazi annexation of Austria), she fled to England, settling in London, where she completed her studies at the Slade School of Fine Art. She exhibited extensively in London: showing a portrait at Claridges in 1940, then holding solo exhibitions in 1942, at German-Jewish émigré Jack Bilbo's Modern Art Gallery in London, and at the Leger Galleries in 1943. In 1946 her work was included in a group show alongside the English painter Graham Sutherland and émigrés Jankel Adler, Raol Ubac and Otto Bachmann at the prestigious Redfern Gallery in Cork Street, London. She also exhibited at Erica Brausen’s Hanover Gallery in Mayfair and participated in mixed shows with the Artists' International Association (AIA); the Arts Council; Ben Uri Gallery; the London Group and the Leicester Galleries, London. Between 1949 and 1959 she lived in Taormina, Sicily, and exhibited in continental Europe. She later returned to London and held two solo shows at Annely Juda Fine Art in 1971 and 1972. She liked to work on a large scale in both a figurative and abstract style. Anna Mayerson died in London in 1984. Her work is represented in the Ben Uri Collection and Somerville College, University of Oxford.
