Ben Uri Research Unit

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


Freda Salvendy artist

Freda Salvendy was born to Jewish parents in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) in 1887; she studied art in Hamburg, becoming a founding member of the ‘Movement’ and the Viennese Association of Female Artists and Craftswomen groups. Following the Anschluss (Nazi annexation of Austria) in 1938, Salvendy fled to England, finding refuge in Cornwall until her internment on the Isle of Man in June 1940. Following her release she exhibited widely in England, including with refugee and left-leaning organisations, the Artists International Association (AIA) and the Free German League of Culture (FGLC), as well as with Ben Uri between 1945 and 1960.

Born: 1887 Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria)

Died: 1965 Malvern, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1938

Other name/s: Frieda Salvendy, Frida Salvendy


Biography

Painter Freda Salvendy was born to Jewish parents in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) on 4 January 1887, though her family originated from Neustadt-an-der-Waag (now Neve Mesto nad Vahom, Slovakia). At the age of 15, she enrolled at art school and later continued her education in Germany, variously in Frankfurt and at the Grossherzoglichen Kunstschule in Weimar with the artists Albin Egger-Lienz and Felix A Harta. Salvendy was a founding member of the Bewegung (Movement), an association of artists who advocated spirituality as the central purpose of art as opposed to the decorative tendencies of the Art Nouveau movement. She was also a member of the Wiener Frauenkunst (‘Viennese Association of Female Artists and Craftswomen’) and one of the few women to become a member of the Hagenbund, an influential art association in Vienna after the First World War. She was known for her landscapes and figure painting as well as her lithography.


Salvendy's expressive and bold style frequently met with hostile criticism. Following the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany) in March 1938, Salvendy was forced to flee to England to avoid racial persecution. She found shelter in Mousehole, Cornwall, where she initially lived with a fellow artist, Ruth Adams and her family – including her sister Grace, who became her life-long companion. In 1939, soon after her arrival, Salvendy was able to show her water-colours of Czechoslovakia and Italy at the recently-founded London gallery of fellow émigré, Hans Calmann. The Jewish Chronicle commented that her works were ‘immensely lively and clever. Her ability to put just the correct dab of colour to indicate a figure or a boat on the water is absolutely uncanny’, although at times her work lacked ‘emotional content’ (Jewish Chronicle, June 1939, p. 50). Salvendy also participated in the First Group Exhibition of German, Austrian, Czechoslovakian Painters and Sculptors held at the Wertheim Gallery (1939), under the auspices of the left-leaning Free German League of Culture (FGLC, which supported German speaking refugees in cultural endeavours) and the Artists International Association (AIA). The Jewish Chronicle described the event as 'one of great interest to the English public. It provides the opportunity to see works of artists that we have not had the privilege of seeing before, and also the opportunity to help these men and women who have been hounded out of their country and whose works have been derided and destroyed for no other reason than that they are Jews or dare to think for themselves', and singled out Savendy for praise (Jewish Chronicle, 23 June 1939, p. 43). A year later, Salvendy exhibited in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in May, prior to being interned as a so-called 'enemy alien' on the Isle of Man in June 1940, following the government's policy of mass internment. Following her release, she exhibited widely across England, including Bradford, Yorkshire (December 1940), while 1941 was a particularly prolific year, with shows at the Czechoslovak Institute, London (January 1941); Leicester (May 1941), Reading (November 1941), and again with the AIA and the FGLC. In 1942 she exhibited her watercolours of Italy, Sloviakia and the Cornish coast, as well as her drawings at the Salford Art Gallery in Manchester. The Manchester Guardian praised her ‘vigorous and sensitive’ drawings and described her studies of infants in arms as being ‘especially aglow with intuition’. The reviewer also added that ‘It is vastly interesting to see our country through the eyes of an exile foreign painter who obviously enjoys her work and has the required technical equipment to communicate her joy and exuberant vitality (T.T. 1942, p.3). In 1943 Salvendy exhibited in Wakefield, Yorkshire and Newlyn, Cornwall; in 1944 in Newcastle and Gloucester; and in 1945, 1946, 1947, 1951, 1954 and 1960, alongside fellow Jewish artists, many of whom had also fled from Nazism, in the annual contemporary open exhibitions, among other shows, held at the Ben Uri Gallery in London. It is likely that her work in the Ben Uri permanent collection was presented at this time. Freda Salvendy died at Court House Nursing Home, Malvern, Worcestershire, England on 24 March 1965 and was buried in Malvern Wells cemetery, Green Lane. A plaque commemorating her life and achievements is now placed on the outside wall of the Nursing Home. Salvendy’s work is represented in UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection, British Museum; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle; Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (SCVA), University of East Anglia; and the University of Sussex Art Collection. Her reputation is currently undergoing a posthumous reassessment and in 2016 her work was included in the survey show The Better Half: Jewish Women Artists Before 1938 at the Jewish Museum in her native Vienna, along with that of fellow émigrées, Margarete Berger-Hammerschlag, Bettina Ehrlich and Marie-Louise von Motesciszky. In 2019, Ben Uri featured Salvendy's work in the exhibition Czech Routes: Selected Czechoslovak Artists in Britain from the Ben Uri and Private Collections.

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)
  • Andrea Winklbauer, Sabine Fellner and Sarah Seidl, Die bessere Hälfte: Jüdische Künstlerinnen bis 1938 (Vienna: Metro Verlag, 2016)
  • 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)
  • James Adams, 'Crusaders of the Lost Art', The Globe and Mail, 15 November 2003, p. 1
  • J.M.S., 'Ben Uri Autumn Exhibition', The Jewish Chronicle, 28 September 1945, p. 17
  • T.T., 'Salford Art Gallery: Contrasted Water-Colours', The Manchester Guardian, 26 June 1942, p. 3
  • T.T., ‘Salford Art Gallery: A Czech Artist’, The Manchester Guardian, 5 June 1942, p. 3
  • H.K., 'Exiles' Exhibition', The Jewish Chronicle, 23 June 1939, p. 43
  • 'Freda Salvendy', The Jewish Chronicle, 16 June 1939, p. 50

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Artists International Association (exhibiting member)
  • Bewegung (founding member)
  • Free German League of Culture (exhibiting member)
  • Grossherzoglichen Kunstschule, Weimar (student)
  • Hagenbund (member)
  • Wiener Frauenkunst (member)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Watercolour At War, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne (2019)
  • Czech Routes: Selected Czechoslovak Artists in Britain from the Ben Uri and Private Collections, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2019)
  • Out of Austria, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2018)
  • Jewish Artists The Ben Uri Collection, Ben Uri Gallery (1994)
  • Kunst im Exil in Grossbritanien 1933-1945, Neuen Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, Berlin (1986)
  • Selections from the Permanent Collection: Watercolours, Drawings, Graphics, Ben Uri Gallery (1977)
  • Selection from the Permanent Collection, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1960)
  • Festival of Britain: Anglo-Jewish Exhibition, 1851-1951, Ben Uri Gallery (1951)
  • Spring Exhibition of Painting, Sculpture and Drawings by Contemporary Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Gallery (1947)
  • Ben Uri Collection of Paintings, Sculpture & Drawings, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1946)
  • Exhibition of Paintings by A. A Wolmark (Konstam Collection), Dobrinsky Paris, and a selection of work from the Ben Uri Collection, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1945)
  • Autumn Exhibition of Paintings, Sculptures and Drawings by Contemporary Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Gallery (19459
  • Allied Artists' Exhibition, Manchester City Art Gallery (1943)
  • Water-colours and Drawings by Freda Salvendy, Salford Art Gallery (1942)
  • Artists International Association (1941)
  • Free German League of Culture (1941)
  • Freda Salvendy, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne (1940)
  • Paintings from Czechoslovakia and other watercolours by Freda Salvendy, Hans Calmann Gallery, London (1939)
  • First Group Exhibition of the works of German, Austrian, and Czechoslovakian Painters and Sculptors, Wertheim Gallery, London (1939)
  • Exhibition of Frida Salvendy and Theodor Fried, Krasoumna jednota, Prague (1935)
  Freda Salvendy
   
Ben Uri collection

Freda Salvendy in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Freda Salvendy]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Freda Salvendy] in the Ben Uri Library