Klara Biller was born to a bourgeoise family with Jewish heritage in Pressburg, Austro-Hungary (now Bratislava, Slovakia) in 1910, but grew up in Budapest, where her mother moved after her father's death in 1912. Biller studied at Álmos Jaschik's private academy (later the School of Art and Design) in Budapest, specialising in book design and advertising, establishing her studio in the capital. During the 1930s she immigrated to England to teach in a school in North Yorkshire and subsequently began working as a successful freelance children's book illustrator during the 1940s.
Graphic designer and book illustrator Klara Biller (née Szántó) was born to a bourgeoise family in Pressburg, Austro-Hungary (now Bratislava, Slovakia) in 1910. Her father, Henrik, worked as the City Architect for Pressburg; after his death in 1912, her mother, Irma, opened a successful milliner's shop in Budapest to support her two daughters. (Biller had Jewish ancestry, but she never disclosed this heritage to her English husband.) Both she and her sister received education from a governess at home, and excelled in German. At the age of ten, Biller spent a year with a foster family in Enfield, in north London, as part of a Save the Children Fund's initiative, which placed malnourished children from Eastern Europe in well-to-do western households. According to Biller, it was then that she fell in love with England and decided to move there in the future (based on recollections of her son, Peter; see Waterhouse 2019, p. 145). Returning to Hungary, she began her artistic career around 1927 by enrolling in Álmos Jaschik's private art academy (later the School of Art and Design) in Budapest, specialising in book design and advertising. On graduation she established her studio in the capital and her colourful work soon gained popularity in both commercial art and children's book illustration. She contributed to advertisements for a range of products, including ladies clothing, Kodak cameras, and drinking chocolate. During this time, Biller became acquainted with Hungarian émigré critic, publisher and curator, Charles Rosner, with whom she kept in close contact; he later helped her source modernist Hungarian paintings, for example by artists such as Paul C. Molnar and János Kmetty, and included her work in his important British wartime endeavour, the Exhibition of Hungarian Graphic Art, held at the Hungarian Club, London (1943). This was a rare showing of Hungarian design in the capital, and marked a the Club's relocation to new premises at 33 Pembridge Square, London W2, presenting work by 14 Hungarian-born artists living in Britain, all but one of whom were to be granted British citizenship.
Although she retained her studio in Budapest, in the 1930s Klara planned to move to England in the hope of accessing better opportunities in graphic design. However, she could not obtain a work visa for this, and instead had to take a post as a German teacher at Whitcliff Grange School, a private girls’ school in Richmond, North Yorkshire. Her immigration may have been facilitated through her elder sister's connections, as she was a contributor to the Austro-Hungarian financial journal Pester Lloyd, but the exact circumstances of her relocation are unclear. Though she was denied an artist's permit from the British government, Biller eventually designed three posters for London Transport between 1935–39, signing them with only her first name (perhaps to avoid being identified as breaching the rules of employment), which are now held at the London Transport Museum. In January 1940 she married newspaper circulation executive, Victor Biller, with whom she had two sons, Stephen and Peter. After her position in England became more secure she began to concentrate on children's book illustration and worked mainly as a freelancer from her home in north west London. Her main employer was the publisher, Collins, with whom she published seven of her own books (most famously the picture book Paul and Mary in 1941) and illustrated four collected volumes of Grimms' fairy tales, among many publications and annuals. She also contributed to more than 150 issues of Child Education magazine for primary school teachers from 1948 to 1968. Biller also created a series of experimental self-portraits in the late 1940s, which were never exhibited. During the 1950s until around 1970, she shifted her focus to designing greeting cards and other ephemera, becoming a leading artist for the Gordon Fraser publishing house. During this period she also began sketching teenage girls from neighbouring council homes at play; these studies, which were only for her private artistic purposes, were characterised by a more daring use of line. Biller also helped her mother (in 1951) and sister to emigrate (following the latter's release from prison after the 1956 Hungarian uprising). Biller's most outstanding achievements include receiving the commission for the 1961 revised edition of the Oxford Nursery Song Book, which featured a black-and-white illustration by her on every page.
After 1968, however, Biller's commissions declined and she had to retire from commercial design. Klara Biller died at Northwick Park Hospital, London in 1989. Her younger son Peter later became Professor of Medieval History at the University of York and carefully assembled his mother's archive, as well as contributing information for the chapter dedicated to Biller and her career in the book Their Safe Haven: Hungarian Artists in Britain from the 1930s, published by Robert Waterhouse in 2019.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Klara Biller]
Publications related to [Klara Biller] in the Ben Uri Library