Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Milein Cosman artist

Milein (Emilie) Cosman was born into a Jewish family in Gotha, Germany in 1921 and educated in Switzerland before immigrating to England in 1939; she studied drawing and printmaking at the Slade School of Fine Art (1939–42), which relocated to Oxford during the war. In 1946 she moved to Hampstead, north London, where her circle included fellow émigré artists Fred Uhlman, John Heartfield and Victor ‘Vicky’ Weisz. She is best known for her drawings of many important twentieth-century cultural figures, as well as her 40-year collaboration with her Viennese émigré husband, musician, musicologist and broadcaster, Hans Keller.

Born: 1921 Gotha, Germany

Died: 2017 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1939

Other name/s: Emilie Cosman


Biography

Painter and printmaker Milein (née Emilie) Cosman was born into a Jewish family in Gotha, Germany on 31 March 1921. She spent the majority of her childhood in Düsseldorf, followed by two years at boarding school in Switzerland, which she left at the age of 18. In 1939 she followed her brother to Britain and entered the Slade School of Fine Art, which amalgamated with the Ruskin School of Art and was relocated to Oxford during the Second World War. She studied drawing under Randolph Schwabe and lithography under Harold Jones. In 1943 she atalso attended evening classes at the Oxford Polytechnic, where she was taught by Bernard Meninsky. To support herself, Cosman began delivering milk using a pony and trap, and taught French and Art at a convent school, as well as giving lectures on art for the Workers' Educational Association (WEA).

In 1946 she moved to Hampstead, where she lived for the rest of her life, and where her circle included many émigrés, among them artists Fred Uhlman, John Heartfield, Jacob Bornfriend, Marie-Louise von Motesiczky and the cartoonist Victor ‘Vicky’ Weisz. She began working as a freelance artist, illustrating books and contributing drawings to national and international magazines and newspapers including the BBC's Radio Times, while continuing to teach evening classes for the WEA and working for the American Broadcasting Station in Europe. Notably, she was commissioned by the German bi-monthly magazine Heute to draw Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's first post-war cabinet in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949. In 1958 Cosman worked on a schools’ television series on drawing for ITV and in the 1960s she joined Camden Printmakers, participating in numerous group shows. She also showed regularly in Ben Uri's open exhibitions from 1946–82.

Cosman is best known for her drawings of many important twentieth-century cultural figures, particularly from the fields of the visual arts, music, literature and dance, including Benjamin Britten, Igor Stravinsky, Francis Bacon, Barbara Hepworth and T.S. Eliot, as well as for her 40-year-long collaboration with her husband, Viennese émigré musician, musicologist and broadcaster, Hans Keller. These include Stravinsky the Music-Maker (2010) which marks the culmination of their shared fascination for their subject over four decades, includes Keller's complete articles on Stravinsky, written between 1954 and 1980, accompanied by Cosman's prints and drawings. She worked primarily in ink, pencil and conté, and was never inhibited by the fame of her subjects: she drew the writer Thomas Mann while he was lecturing, Sir Arthur Bliss conducting and John Ogdon at the piano. She worked with great swifteness and precision, saying: 'I can only draw fast. If I draw slowly, I almost always get it wrong. I think all the Stravinsky sketches were done in one day' (Milein Cosman obituary, The Guardian). In his appreciation of Cosman's work, fellow émigré Sir Ernst Gombrich commented: 'Posterity will be grateful to Milein Cosman above all for the sureness of her eye, with which she has succeeded in capturing the unique quality of so many of our distinguished contemporaries.' (Obituary, The Guardian). She claimed, however, that: 'What I really like to draw best are people who work: fishermen and road menders. Yes, it must be said, that really a lot of people have quite wonderful faces'.

In 2006, Cosman founded the Cosman Keller Art and Music Trust, which supports young musicians and artists, as well as publishing, exhibiting and archiving her own and Keller’s work. She subsequently bequeathed over 1,300 drawings to the Royal College of Music. Despite encroaching blindness from the 1990s onwards, and in 2011, the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, Cosman continued to work for as long as she was able. In 2019 the Association of Jewish Refugees unveiled a blue plaque at 50 Willow Road NW3, the former home of Cosman and Keller from 1951-67.

Milein Cosman died in London, England on 21 November 2017 and is represented in numerous UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, London. She bequeathed a set of over 1300 drawings to the Royal College of Music, London and a series of drawings, sketchbooks, etchings and oil paintings, The Milein Cosman Dancers Collection, to the Department of Music and Dance Studies at the University of Salzburg. Cosman's oral testimony is part of the AJR Refugee Voices Project. A biography of Cosman by art historian Ines Schlenker was published in 2019.

Related books

  • Nicola Baird ed., Czech Routes: Selected Czechoslovak Artists in Britain from the Ben Uri and Private Collections (London: Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, 2019)
  • Ines Schlenker, Milein Cosman: Capturing Time (Munich: Prestel, 2019)
  • Anne Rau Dawes, 'Milein Cosman at the Slade', in Sally Crawford, Katharina Ulmschneider and Jas Elsner, eds., Ark of Civilization: Refugee Scholars and Oxford University, 1930–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)
  • Christoph Böll dir., Milein Cosman (documentary film, 2014)
  • Hans Keller and Milein Cosman, Britten (London: Plumbago Books, 2013)
  • Julian Hogg and Thomas B. Schumann, eds., Milein Cosman. Lebenslinien/Lifelines (Cologne: Hürth, 2012)
  • Hans Keller and Milein Cosman, Stravinsky the Music-Maker, Writings, Prints and Drawings (London: Toccata Press, 2010)
  • Jutta Vinzent, 'List of Refugee Artists (Painters, Sculptors, and Graphic Artists) From Nazi Germany in Britain (1933–1945)' in Identity and Image: Refugee Artists from Nazi Germany in Britain (1933–1945) (Kromsdorf/Weimar: VDG Verlag, 2006) pp. 249-298
  • Hans Keller and Milein Cosman, The Jerusalem Diary: Music, Society and Politics, 1977 and 1979 (London: Plumbago Books, 2001)
  • Hans Keller, 1975 (1984 minus 9) (London: Denis Dobson, 1977)
  • Hans Keller, Stravinsky at Rehearsal: A Sketchbook (London: Denis Dobson, 1962)
  • Neville Cardus, Composer's Eleven [drawings by Milein Cosman] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1958)
  • Musical Sketchbook (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1957)
  • Hans Keller and Donald Mitchell, eds., Benjamin Britten: A Commentary on his Work from a Group of Specialists [drawings by Milein Cosman] (London: Rockliff, 1952)

Public collections

Related organisations

  • American Broadcasting Station in Europe (employee)
  • Camden Printmakers (member)
  • Cosman Keller Art and Music Trust (founder)
  • Free German League of Culture (member)
  • Oxford Polytechnic (student)
  • Radio Times (contributor)
  • Royal College of Music, London (donor)
  • Ruskin School of Art (student)
  • Slade School of Fine Art (student)
  • Workers' Educational Association (lecturer)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Britten & Milein Cosman, Royal College of Music and Britten-Pears Foundation, Red House, Aldeburgh (2019)
  • Czech Routes: Selected Czechoslovak Artists in Britain from the Ben Uri and Private Collections, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2019)
  • Lifelines, Clare Hall, Cambridge (2019)
  • The Lives of Others: German Refugee Artists to Britain since 1900, Ben Uri Gallery (2017)
  • Werke von Milein Cosman, Rathaus, Düsseldorf (2015)
  • Lifelong Impressions: Paintings, Prints and Drawings by Milein Cosman, Austrian Cultural Forum, presented by the Jewish Museum, London, followed by Burgh House & Hampstead Museum (2008)
  • Milein Cosman, Belgrave Gallery, London (1996)
  • Solo exhibition, Gallery 44, Aldeburgh (1987)
  • Solo exhibition, Charlotte Mason College, Ambleside, Cumbria (1987)
  • Stadtmuseum, Düsseldorf (1988)
  • Jewish Faces (a contemporary view), The Contemporary Portrait Society at the Ben Uri Gallery (1982)
  • Theatre des Champs-Élysées, Festival International de Danse, British Council, Paris (1970)
  • City of London Festival (1968)
  • Tercentenary Exhibition of Contemporary Anglo-Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1956)
  • Subjects of Jewish Interest: Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1946)
  Milein Cosman
   
Ben Uri collection

Milein Cosman in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Milein Cosman]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Milein Cosman] in the Ben Uri Library