Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1927 Vienna, Austria

Died: 2025 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1939

Biography

Artist Gerda Svarny (née Polenezer) was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austrian 1927, spending part of her childhood in the Viennese district of Alsergrund. Brought up mainly by her grandmother, Rosa, while her parents travelled for work, she showed early artistic promise and had been accepted for ballet classes at the Vienna State Opera, a path abruptly cut short by the Anschluss. As a consequence of the Nazi annexation of Austria, she and her family fled to join relatives in Prague, 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, was transported to Theresienstadt and subsequently perished in Auschwitz. Her first foster placement in England proved deeply unhappy, and she was later moved the Czech Children’s Home before transferring to the Czech Refugee Hotel.

After leaving school, she rejoined her father, then living in Maida Vale in London. 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. During her studies there she also met the émigré artist, Oskar Kokoschka, a formative encounter (Porter 2025). Svarny became an active member of Young Austria, a youth organisation associated with the anti-fascist Austrian Centre, which supported refugees in London, attending dances, singing in the choir and taking part in a dance performance at London's Coliseum.

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 later resumed their relationship in Prague, where they married in 1948. Soon afterwards they decided to leave the country once more, fleeing the newly established communist regime, and returned to London, where she brought up their two children. She resumed her art career 25 years later, focusing on painting in a variety of styles, ranging from figuration to abstraction, and favouring a colourful palette; in her later years she also created graphic art. In the early 1970s she returned to formal training at Morley College for adult education, and in the 1980s further developed her practice during studies at Camden Arts Centre, maintaining a painting group that met weekly for two decades.

In 1984, Svarny had her first solo exhibition in London at the United Nations International Maritime Organisation on Albert Embankment, near Lambeth Bridge, and showed in a group open exhibition at Ben Uri Gallery the same year. She subsequently participated in mixed shows in London venues, including Camden Arts Centre, Morley College, Hampstead Studio Gallery (1994), Llewellyn Alexander Gallery (1994, 1995), and Marryat Fine Art (1997), where she took part in Summer Celebration, exhibiting alongside six fellow women artists with whom she had previously studied at Camden Arts Centre in the 1980s, including Anita Bermann, Dorothy Ellis and Elaine Fine. A reviewer noted that her work ‘reflects the imagery and memories both joyous and slightly sinister of her early childhood in Vienna’, highlighting the lasting influence of these formative years on her art (Barnes, Mortlake and Sheen Times 1997, p. 16). She also participated in the annual picture fairs at Ben Uri in 2002 and 2003. 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 Svarny travelled from England to attend the opening in her native district. In 2012, at the age of 85, she had a further solo show entitled An Exploration of Paintingat the Westbank Gallery, London.

Gerda Svarny died in London, England in May 2025 and is buried in Golders Green cemetery. Her work is not currently held in the UK public domain though family papers are held in the collection of the Wiener Library, London. In 2023, her photograph was featured, along with other Kindertransport children saved by Nicholas Winton, in an exhibition, One Life, held at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Related books

Lexikon Österreichischer Frauen, biografiA band 3 (Wien Köln Weimar: Böhlau Verlag Ges.m.b.H&Co. KG, 2016), p. 3245
'Marryat Fine Art. A Visual Summer Celebration', Barnes, Mortlake and Sheen Times, 20 June 1997 p. 16

Related organisations

Czechoslovak School of Applied Arts (student)
Young Austria (member)

Selected exhibitions

Gerda Svarny: An Exploration of Painting, Westbank Gallery in London (2012)
Gerda Svarny: From Figurative to Abstract, Alsegrund, Vienna, Austria (2007)
Ben Uri Gallery Annual Picture Fair, Ben Uri Gallery, London (2003, 2002)
Summer Celebration, Marryatt Fine Art, London (1997)
Gerda Svarny, United Nations, London (1984)

Ben Uri archive

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

Ben Uri Research Unit

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

Gerda Svarny artist