George Mayer-Marton was born into a Jewish family in Győr, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary), in 1897 and studied in Vienna and Munich. Following the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938 he fled to England, where he worked as an artist, art teacher and lecturer, particularly advancing the use of fresco and mosaics in English church decoration.
Artist and art teacher George (Georg or Gyuri) Mayer-Marton was born on 3 June 1897 in Győr, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary), son of a Jewish doctor. He served in the Austro-Hungarian Army as an artillery officer during the First World War. After studying at the art academies of Vienna and Munich (1919–24), he became a successful painter, designer, writer and curator, holding the post of Secretary, and then Vice-President, of the modernist society of artists in Vienna, the Hagenbund, participating in the group’s first exhibition in 1924. He was twice awarded the Prize of Honour of the City of Vienna (1928 and 1936) and received the Decoration de Chevalier de l’Ordre de Leopold II of Belgium in 1937.
Mayer-Marton’s career was interrupted by the Anschluss (Nazi annexation of Austria) in March 1938 and the subsequent passing of anti-Semitic laws, leading to his flight to England with his wife, pianist Greta Fried, later in the same year. Unusually, he received a British visa in 1939, allowing him to remain as an artist and art teacher. Soon after arrival, he participated in the First Group Exhibition of German, Austrian, Czechoslovakian Painters and Sculptors, organised by the Free German League of Culture (FGLC) and Austrian Centre (AC) at the Wertheim Gallery, London, in 1939. Obtaining a modest teaching post at St John’s Wood School of Art, his career was again interrupted by the Blitz, in which his studio home was bombed in September 1940. All the artwork he had brought into exile was destroyed. Subsequently, he worked as a lecturer for 12 years for the British Institute of Art Education and later for CEMA, predecessor to the Arts Council of Great Britain. These were difficult years for Mayer-Marton, both personally and professionally. His wife never recovered her mental equilibrium after the destruction of their home, and he was unable to paint in oil, financially or logistically, until 1948, mainly producing watercolours.
In 1945, Mayer-Marton learned that his parents had perished - his mother, killed outright during the liquidation of the Győr ghetto; his father, transported with 5,000 others to Auschwitz and murdered, while his younger brother Vilmos died on a forced labour march. Mayer-Marton painted Women with Boulders (1945, Imperial War Museum) after receiving this terrible news. In 1952, after the death of his wife, he moved to Liverpool as Principal Lecturer at Liverpool College of Art, a post he held until his death. He designed and executed mural and mosaic commissions for schools and churches in the North West and Midlands, including the Pentecost mosaic for the Chapel of Unity in Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King and a mosaic font for St. Michael’s Church, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton. In the 1950s, he exhibited at London's Leicester Galleries and the Liverpool Academy. Mayer-Marton retained no obvious trace of his Jewish identity, once he had settled in England, though his work and teaching ethos were shaped by his experiences. He introduced innovations into the art curriculum by incorporating philosophy and history and presenting new approaches and media. He also continued to play the violin and musicians were often the subject of his art, along with evocative landscapes of northern England and Wales.
In 1955, Mayer-Marton produced a large mosaic, almost eight metres high, depicting Christ in gold against a dark blue cross for the Church of the Holy Rosary, Oldham, flanked by the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist. These painted figures were covered over with white emulsion in 1980. The work (one of only two ecclesiastical murals by Mayer-Marton surviving in situ), uniquely combined both fresco and mosaic. Following the decision by the Roman Catholic diocese of Salford to close the church, a national campaign was launched by Nick Braithwaite, the artist’s great-nephew, to list the artwork. Many authorities on public art from across the UK and Europe backed the campaign and the work was eventually granted Grade II-listed status in 2022.
George Mayer-Marton died in Liverpool, England, on 8 August 1960; a memorial exhibition was held at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool in the same year. His work was exhibited posthumously in London at Crane Kalman Gallery (founded by Hungarian émigré, Andras Kalman) in 1964, and Leicester Galleries in 1971, as well as in Vienna, including a retrospective at the Belvedere in 1986. His work featured in Kunst im Exil/Art in Exile (Berlin, London, 1986) and in Ben Uri's touring exhibition Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain c. 1933-45 (2009–10). Following the inclusion of his work in this show, and associated publicity, there has been a revival in his reputation, in both the UK and Austria, through family efforts; a dedicated website has now been created. In the UK public domain his work is represented in several collections, including Victoria Gallery and Museum, Liverpool; Ben Uri Collection; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and National Galleries of Scotland. In 2019 his work featured in the touring show, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art, originating at Bristol's Royal West of England Academy. In 2022, Ben Uri received on longterm loan, The March of the Parents, an oil painting memorialising the murder of Mayer-Marton's parents in the Holocaust, which has subsequently featured in several exhibitions.
George Mayer-Marton in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [George Mayer-Marton]
Publications related to [George Mayer-Marton] in the Ben Uri Library