Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1927 Vienna, Austria

Died:

Year of Migration to the UK: 1939

Biography

Artist Gerda Svarny (née Polenezer) was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria in 1927. Following Hitler’s accession to the Chancellorship and the Anschluss (Nazi invasion of Austria), she fled with her family to Czechoslovakia in 1938. From there, in 1939, at the age of 11, she was sent on alone to England a few months before the outbreak of the Second World War, one of the 669 mostly Jewish children assisted by the humanitarian Nicholas Winton to find safe passage out of Prague; her mother, who remained behind, subsequently perished in Auschwitz concentration camp.

In England, Gerda lived initially in a Czech children’s home and later in the Czech Refugee Hotel. She was awarded a free place at the short-lived Czechoslovak School of Applied Arts (1943-45) funded by the Czech Refugee Committee at Chelsea Polytechnic in Manresa Road, SW3, where she studied between 1944 and 1945, also working in an office to support herself. She was tutored by Wolfgang A. Schlosser (1913-1984), a commercial artist later celebrated for his film and advertising posters, who focused on life drawing and took small groups of students to galleries for lectures. Gerda became an active member of Young Austria, attending dances and singing in the choir, but avoided politics. She met her future husband, Walter Svarny, a Czech émigré businessman, who had come to England with the Czech army, by chance in the Bayswater Road; they married in Prague in 1945, then returned to London, where she raised their two children. She resumed her art career 25 years later, focusing on painting in a variety of styles ranging from the figurative to the abstract and favouring a colourful palette; in her later years, she has also created graphic art.

In 1984 Svarny had her first solo exhibition at the United Nations International Maritime Organisation on Albert Embankment, near Lambeth Bridge, exhibiting in a mixed open exhibition at Ben Uri Gallery the same year, and subsequently, participating in mixed shows at Camden Arts Centre, Morley College, Howard Gallery (1990), Hampstead Studio gallery (1994), the Llewellyn Alexander Gallery (1994, 1995), and in the annual picture fairs at Ben Uri Gallery in 2002, 2003 and 2006. She has held solo exhibitions at the Atrium Gallery (1995, 1996), Mind’s Eye Gallery (1997) and Marriot Gallery (1997), London. In 2007, to mark her 80th birthday, the Alsergrund District Museum of Vienna held an exhibition of her work entitled Gerda Svarny: From Figurative to Abstract, accompanied by a limited-edition catalogue, and in 2012, at the age of 85, she had a further solo show entitled An Exploration of Painting at the Westbank Gallery in London. Gerda Svarny continues to live and work in London. Her work is held in private collections in England, Germany, Spain, Norway, and the USA.

Related books

Sarah MacDougall, interview with Gerda Svarny, 2019
biografiA band 3. 2016. p. 3245

Selected exhibitions

Gerda Svarny: An Exploration of Painting, the Westbank Gallery in London (2012)
Gerda Svarny: From Figurative to Abstract, Alsegrund, Vienna, Austria (2007)
Ben Uri Gallery Annual Picture Fair (2002, 2003, 2006)
Ben Uri Gallery Open (1984)
Gerda Svarny, United Nations, London (1984)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Gerda Svarny]