Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1913 Vienna, Austria-Hungary

Died: 1998 Hampstead, London

Year of Migration to the UK: 1938

Biography

Illustrator Gertrude Elias was born on 5 November 1913 in Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now, Austria). Her Jewish father was a lawyer with left-wing political views; much of his work consisted of pro bono cases for the financially disadvantaged. Her grandmother made ladies’ underwear. Elias graduated from a Viennese grammar school for girls and then enrolled at the College of Applied Arts. In 1929, she started working at a knitwear design factory in the German city of Oberlungwitz. However, in 1933, as Hitler came to power, she returned to Vienna. In 1938, Elias fled Austria due to her Jewish heritage and the increasing threat of Nazi anti-Semitism. Before this, she had already split her time between England and Austria for work.

Upon her arrival in England, Elias first worked as a cleaning woman in a boarding house, often the only way refugee women could secure a visa. In 1941, Elias responded to a British Ministry of Information call for a psychological cartoon intended as anti-Nazi propaganda, submitting a series of animal cartoons that were ultimately rejected. Although disappointed, she initially attached little significance to the decision. However, following the publication of Orwell’s Animal Farm and its later cartoon adaptation, she became convinced that both had drawn on her ideas. Although Orwell developed the concept substantially into an anti-Soviet narrative, Elias remained convinced that its foundations were hers. ‘The fate of my animal cartoons’, she explained, ‘landed me in a deep depression. I had lost faith in the honesty of people and wondered how I could carry on my work under such conditions’ (Elias 1993, p. 102).

Despite the disappointing episode with Orwell, Elias continued to work with illustrations and art. Her oeuvre primarily includes illustrations, though she also worked with linocuts, collage, painting and photography. She tried to sell her drawings to different publishers and would often visit the British Museum, where she reworked her drawings with the intention of creating an anti-Nazi animated film. In 1943, she illustrated a children's novel titled Secret Service. Throughout the 1950s, she illustrated Dr. Eric Singer’s books on handwriting analysis, including Graphology for Everyman, Personality in Handwriting,The Graphologist’s Alphabet, and Handwriting and Marriage. These publications, reprinted for decades, popularised graphology within business and law enforcement contexts. Throughout the 1950s and 1970s, Elias worked in the textile industry. She also underwent psychotherapy and produced linocuts analysing doctor-patient dynamics. In the 1970s, the linocuts were published in the journal Medical World.

From the mid-1970s, Elias could be found both exhibiting and curating. In 1974 she participated in a group show, Artists for Democracy, hosted by the Royal College of Art. Child and World was the title of her photographic exhibition held at Swiss Cottage Library in 1979 and three years later she organised an exhibition titled Women’s Contribution to the Liberation of Mankind – A Historical Survey of 150 Years, in cooperation with the London Borough of Camden and Camden Council for International Cooperation, which opened at the Edinburgh Festival. In 1985, Hounslow Trade Union Council mounted an exhibition marking Women’s Day at Hounslow Manor School, with guests from the African National Congress, members of the peace movement, and the Whitwell Ladies’ Miners Support Group. Elias' work, illustrating women’s global fight against slavery and fascism, stood out.

In addition to her artwork, Elias was an activist. She edited the anti-colonial journal Saudi Arabia and was co-editor of the Movement for Colonial Freedom’s magazine, Liberation, in which her illustrations appeared regularly and for which she wrote extensively on Palestine. She attended the 1975 National Assembly of Women’s European Seminar for the UN’s International Women’s Year in London. She also worked in the field of Industrial Education and criticised the exploitation of young, skilled female factory workers, particularly those lacking union representation in northern England and Northern Ireland, advocating for their higher education and increased union involvement. The connection to Northern Ireland is possibly linked to her cousin and fellow immigrant, Edith Sukela, who had factories in the region. Additionally, Elias was a member of the Communist Party’s History Group and the Communist Party Women’s Department, and was involved in the Movement for Colonial Freedom, and was later active within the Labour Party.

In 1993, Elias published an autobiography titled The Suspect Generation: My Life, My Time, My Work, accompanied by illustrations by Kaethe Kollwitz, Mahmoud Sabri, and Julian Motau. In the text Elias discusses how being an immigrant in the 1930s meant being a member of a ‘suspected generation’. Gertrude Elias died at her home 16 Agincourt Road, Hampstead, London, England on 28 October 1998. In the UK public domain her archive and work are held at the Marx Memorial Library, the Trades Union Congress Library and the V&A.

Ana-Maria Milčić

Related books

Ana-Maria Milčić, 'From Exile to Expression: Gertrude Elias and the Critique of Postwar Psychiatry and Psychology in Britain', in Kate Kangaslahti et al., eds., At War: The Avant-Garde and Modernism in Times of Conflict, Vol. 9: EAM series (Berlin: De Gruyter, forthcoming 2026).
Gertrude Elias, The Suspect Generation: My Life, My Time, My Work (London: London Voices, 1993)
Eric Singer and Gertrude Elias (illustrations), A Manual of Graphology (London: Treasure, 1969)
Eric Singer and Gertrude Elias (illustrations), Personality on Handwriting (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1954)
Eric Singer and Gertrude Elias (illustrations), Handwriting and Marriage: A Guide to Compatibility (London: Rider & Company, 1953)
Eric Singer and Gertrude Elias (illustrations), Graphology for Everyman (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1951)
Eric Singer and Gertrude Elias (illustrations), The Graphologist’s Alphabet (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1950)
Normal Dale and Gertrude Elias (illustrations), Secret Service (London: John Lane The Bodley Head Limited, 1947)

Public collections

Related organisations

Communist Party's History Group (member)
Communist Party Women’s Department (member)
Labour Party (member )
Movement for Colonial Freedom (member)

Selected exhibitions

Women’s Day Exhibition (group show), Hounslow Manor School, London (1985)
Women’s Contribution to the Liberation of Mankind – A Historical Survey of 150 Years (organised), Edinburgh Festival, Edinburgh (1982)
Child and World (solo exhibition), Swiss Cottage Library, Swiss Cottage, London (1979)
The World as We See It (group show), Swiss Cottage Library, London (1977, 1975)
Artists for Democracy (group show), Royal College of Art, London (1974)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Gertrude Elias]