Ben Uri Research Unit

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


Elisabeth Tomalin artist

Elisabeth Tomalin (née Wallach) was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Dresden, Germany in 1912 and studied at the Reimann Schule in Berlin. In the mid- 1930s, she fled from Nazi Germany and took refuge in London, where she worked as a drawing assistant for fellow émigré architect Ernő Goldfinger, and subsequently at the Exhibition department of the Ministry of Information. Postwar, she headed Marks and Spencer’s new textile print studio, retraining in her sixties to become a pioneering art therapist, teaching until the age of 94 in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Born: 1912 Dresden, Germany

Died: 2012 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1936

Other name/s: Elisabeth Wallach


Biography

Textile designer and art therapist, Elisabeth Tomalin (née Wallach) was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Dresden, Germany on 4 October 1912, the youngest of four children. She despised her parents' bourgeois lifestyle and after leaving school early, when money for continuing education was tight, she moved to Vienna, distancing herself from her family. Finding work demonstrating pianos in a department store, she soon joined the city's bohemian circles. With a much older boyfriend, Ernst Wagner, anthroposophist and art teacher, she developed an interest in Jungian psychology, which became a life-long fascination. She attended the first Eranos conference in Switzerland in 1933 and at this time started using a mysterious invented name, 'Suaja' for herself. Encouraged to pursue a career in art, Tomalin enrolled in Berlin's progressive, Jewish-owned Reimann Schule, where she was influenced by her enamelling tutor, Professor K H Rosenberg, particularly in her distinctive approach to colour, and in understanding the design potential of mandalas and batiks. With the rise of Nazism the School was forced to close, and Tomalin left without formal qualifications. Fleeing Germany alone in 1936, she arrived in London without a visa, unable to find suitable employment; unlike many of her female peers, she would not countenance the unhappy alternative of arriving on a domestic visa.

Taking temporary refuge in Paris, she took on enough 'black market' work to create a portfolio and was then readmitted to Britain as a fully-fledged designer, securing work with Barlow & Company in Manchester, manufacturer of printed silks, before the war affected the production of luxury goods. Following Kristallnacht in 1938, Tomalin was able to rescue her parents and her remaining sibling from Germany, who eventually immigrated to South America. In 1939 she met Miles Tomalin, journalist, poet, musician, and former International Brigade fighter, at a refugee soup kitchen where he was working (and she was eating). His family owned the clothing firm, Jaeger, but were unable to employ her. Miles divorced his first wife, Beth Tomalin, and married Elisabeth on 25 July 1940, thus sparing her the indignity of internment. During the war Tomalin worked in the practice of modernist architect Ernő Goldfinger, and at the Exhibitions department of the Ministry of Information. Her daughter, Stefany, was born in 1945; several portraits of mother and daughter were taken by renowned émigrée photographer (and spy), Edith Tudor-Hart (see Ben Uri Collection). By May 1948, Tomalin was employed by Alexander Felgate in his silk printing business, who then introduced her to Marks and Spencer, where she was appointed head of the new textile print studio from 1949, designing fabrics for colourful 'New Look' dresses for the masses.

As the main breadwinner, Elisabeth was restless, driven, critical and ambitious, while Miles found it difficult to secure permanent employment. Around 1956, having parted amicably, the couple moved into separate flats in a new block designed by Goldfinger on Regents Park Road. During the 1960s, having left M&S – it was now cheaper to import ready-printed textiles from the Far East – Tomalin variously worked as a furnishing colour consultant at Heal & Son; a freelance designer of wrapping paper for J. Royle; for Slumberland; and as a textile designer for Ramm Son & Crocker. Her interest in psychology remained, and after retiring from the commercial world in her sixties, she retrained as an art therapist in New York with her childhood friend, émigrée Ruth Cohn, who ran the Workshop Institute for Living Learning. Undertaking work experience in the early 1970s in a psychiatric hospital near Bonn, she returned regularly to Germany to work with patients and trainees, eventually publishing on her methods, and assisting in establishing one of the first accredited post-graduate qualification for art therapists in Germany. She taught until the age of 94, holding seminars in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Her daughter, Stefany, is a noted authority on beads, and her grandson, designer, Thomas Heatherwick, attributed his grandmother's commercial success to her ability to be creative while remaining firmly within the confines of contemporary British taste.

Elisabeth Tomalin died on 8 March 2012 in London, England. Posthumously her work has featured in Ben Uri's exhibitions including Refugees: The Lives of Others (2017), Exodus: Masterworks by Emigré Artists from the Ben Uri Collection, Bushey Museum & Art Gallery, Hertfordshire (2018); Finchleystrasse: German artists in exile in Great Britain and beyond 1933-45, German Embassy, London (2018) and Art-Exit 1939: A Very Different Europe, 12 Star Gallery, Europe House, London (2019). Her work is in UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection and the V&A. In 2017 Tomalin's life was featured in a documentary directed by Robert Sternberg, entitled Refuge Britain: Stories of Émigré Designers.

Related books

  • Rachel Dickson and Sarah MacDougall, Finchleystrasse: German artists in exile in Great Britain and beyond 1933–45 (London: Ben Uri Gallery and Museum in association with the German Embassy London, 2018)
  • Rachel Dickson, 'The Only Joy in Life is Being Creative': Elisabeth Tomalin (1912–2012), Émigrée Designer', in Charmian Brinson, Jana Barbora Buresova and Andrea Hammel eds., Exile and Gender II: Politics, Education and the Arts (Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2017)
  • Elisabeth Tomalin and Renate Schumacher, Sand-Spiel: Entäussern, Erinnern, Heilendes Spiel (Köln: Claus Richter Verlag, 1998)
  • Elisabeth Tomalin and Peter Schauwecker, Kunst-und Gestaltungstherapie in der Gruppe (Köln: Claus Richter Verlag, 1989)

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Marks & Spencer (textile designer)
  • Ministry of Information (designer)
  • Reimann Schule (student)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Art-Exit 1939: A Very Different Europe, 12 Star Gallery, Europe House, London (2019)
  • Exodus: Masterworks by Emigré Artists from the Ben Uri Collection, Bushey Museum & Art Gallery, Hertfordshire (2018)
  • Finchleystrasse: German Artists in Exile in Great Britain and Beyond 1933–45, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, in association with the German Embassy London (2018)
  • Refugees: The Lives of Others – two exhibitions of works by German refugee artists, Ben Uri Gallery (2017)
  • A Searching Journey in Colours, Kentish Town Health Centre (2009)
  Elisabeth Tomalin
   
Ben Uri collection

Elisabeth Tomalin in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Elisabeth Tomalin]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Elisabeth Tomalin] in the Ben Uri Library