Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1908 Düsseldorf, Germany

Died: 1992 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1937

Biography

Gallerist and art dealer Erica Brausen was born into a conservative merchant bourgeois family in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1908. After completing her education in Germany, she left her homeland in the early 1930s, fleeing the rise of Nazism, and moved to the Montparnasse area of Paris. Here, she became friends with many celebrated international artists living locally, including Joan Miró and Alberto Giacometti. Through her friendship with Miró, she relocated to Majorca in 1935 where she opened a bar, popular with artists, writers and visiting sailors, through which she assisted Jews and socialist friends in escaping the naval blockade established by the Franco regime during the Spanish Civil War. The French surrealist writer, Michel Leiris, credited her for saving both his and his wife's lives after Brausen successfully convinced an American submarine captain to take the couple to safety in Marseilles.

Brausen escaped the Franco regime on a fishing boat from Majorca to England in 1937, and was reunited in London with a network of international friends from France and Majorca. Settling in the capital, she began organising small art exhibitions, often in artists' studios. She married a gay artist friend in order to work legally, to disguise her lesbian relationship with Catherina 'Toto' Koopman, which began in 1945, and to protect her gallery interests, working first at the Storran Gallery next to the Royal Academy, followed by the St George's Gallery in Mayfair, and then at the Redfern Gallery on Cork Street, where she presented work by young contemporaries, Graham Sutherland and Francis Bacon, among others. In 1948, with funding from Peter and Elsa Barker-Mill, Brausen and American-born banker Arthur Jeffress founded the Hanover Gallery in St George's Street, off Hanover Square, which opened with a solo exhibition of the work of Graham Sutherland. Bacon remembered it as 'an excellent exhibition space with large rooms of good proportions and proper day lighting for the pictures' (The Independent obituary). Brausen was key to Bacon's early success, hosting his first solo show in 1949, and they remained close until the artist moved to the Marlborough Gallery in 1958 (also founded by émigrés). Her 'imperious taste' defined the Hanover Gallery's programme which, aside from Francis Bacon, also featured exhibitions of work by major contemporary artists with whom she built relationships, including Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, Henry Moore, Henri Matisse, Max Ernst, Lucian Freud and William Scott. Brausen also became Alberto Giacometti's principal dealer in London, selling more than 70 of his works. In 1949 the British Government lifted an earlier ban on the importation of works of art for sale, which the Hanover Gallery swiftly took advantage of, dealing in works by a wide range of European and American artists. The close relationships which Brausen formed with individual artists were instrumental in the business's success. For example, during the Hanover Gallery's annual sculpture exhibitions she allowed Moore to arrange his own exhibitions in the gallery; in return, she was able to buy works directly from him. In 1962 Brausen entered into a fruitful partnership with fellow London art dealers, Gimpel Fils, opening the Gimpel und Hanover Galerie in Zurich. The Hanover Gallery closed in 1973 after suffering repercussions from the 1971 stock market crash. However, Brausen remained involved with the Gimpel und Hanover Galerie, which continued to trade until 1984. In the 26 years of the Hanover Gallery's existence, it was firmly established as one of the most important galleries in the art world at the time, showcasing the most diverse and interesting contemporary art and establishing an international reputation.

In 1991 Brausen's long term partner, Catherina 'Toto' Koopman, a former model with whom she had been living openly for more than 40 years, passed away. Heartbroken, Erica Brausen died in London a few months later in 1992, after having donated a number of important works from her collection to the Tate, as well as the records of the Hanover Gallery to the Tate Archive.

Related books

Brave New Visions: the Émigrés who transformed the British Art World (Sotheby's, 2019)
Cherith Summers, Erica Brausen and the Hanover Gallery 1948-1973 (MA Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2018)
Jon Lys Turner, 'The Visitors' Book', in Francis Bacon's Shadow: the Lives of Richard Chopping and Denis Wirth-Miller (Little, Brown Book Group: 2017)
Jean-Noel Liaut, The Many Lives of Miss K: Toto Koopman - Model, Muse, Spy (Rizzoli International Publications, 2013)
Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo, Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art (London: Penguin, 2009)
Jean Yves-Mock, Erica Brausen (Paris: Premier Marchand de Francis Bacon, 1996)

Public collections

Related organisations

Tate Gallery (archive)
Storran Gallery (employee)
St George's Gallery (employee)
Redfern Gallery (employee)
Hanover Gallery (owner)

Selected exhibitions

Brave New Visions: The Émigrés who transformed the British Art World, Sotheby's (2019)
William Scott, Hanover Gallery (1971)
Niki de Saint-Phalle, Hanover Gallery (1969)
Francis Bacon, Hanover Gallery (1949, 1950, 1952)
Graham Sutherland, Hanover Gallery (1948)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Erica Brausen]